Home from Houston...Part 1

Wow, what a week!!!!!!!

I won't be able to cover everything in one post...but I can say the highlights in a nutshell were these:

---First, spending time with my gracious hostess, Debra--and seeing her amazing quilts in person. They utterly blew me away.
---Second was working (and rooming) with some of my Alliance for American Quilts board members and interacting with Festival goers at our "If These Quilts Could Talk" exhibit, which was a big success.
---Third was the great and unexpected experience of assisting Michele Muska, of Simplicity Creative Group, in her Make It University classes, sponsored by Quilting Arts.
---Fourth was a very special dinner party of friends old and new, hosted by Kathleen Glynn, of the Daily Stitch.....
---Fifth was shopping...I did a little, not too much though. But it was great fun to look at everything.
---Sixth--of course--was getting to see the amazing quilts on display at Festival. I really loved the show this year, which I haven't been able to say in years past.

Winning Second Place in my category of Embellished Quilts was pretty fun too. ;-) I'll start there...

Here I am waving to you all!

And here is the quilt that took First Place in this category.

This is extremely elegant and perfectly executed. It deserved the top prize. If you click on it and look closely, you will see it is an alphabet quilt!

Debra and I had our picture taken together in front of Kathy's Hoffman Challenge quilt.

What a beautiful piece she made!

I decided that Make It University, which is a series of hands-on 1 hour classes on the show floor where students are chosen by lottery right before class, is actually High Speed Kindergarten.
25 lucky students pile into the classroom area (which passers-by can see, kind of like an open kitchen in a restaurant), are given an array of new supplies to work with and a simple project to try them out on. It is a great way to learn a new technique, they only have 60 minutes start to finish, and is it wild!!!!!
Michele is a consummate teacher and it was a privilege to be her assistant and watch her in action. She had me panting after her, while she was cool, calm, and collected.

As you walk by, this is how the class looks.

This is one of Michele's class samples. It is a collaged picture frame. It has a peel and stick background, which she covered with cool craft paper...then glued on layers of trims, embossed metal motifs, cut out fabric bits...all kinds of great stuff is added, then drawn on, etc, etc. She coated all with a layer of Modge Podge to finish.

Well, who won the lottery and sat in front but my old friends from class last winter, Lisa Encabo and her mom, Marge!

It was sooo good to see them again!

We had another mother and her daughter working away too. Here they are with Michele.


That young girl made art!

Other students felt like young girls, too.

Tell me this doesn't look fun!
Her frame came out very cool.

I love how this was purely instinctive design decision-making. There wasn't too much time to think about things...just do it!

And of course, every student's frame was completely unique.

As I said, I could barely keep up with Michele...

...but I sure learned a lot from her and enjoyed the students immensely!


A lot of meeting up with old friends happens at Quilt Festival, and one group I was really happy to see was the ArtBra ladies, who mounted a gorgeous exhibit of bras from the Way to Women's Wellness calendars. Willa Fuller was there, Kathleen Glynn, and the founder of WTWW, Victoria Adams Brown. Kathleen invited me to joint them for a dinner she was hosting with a few other friends.

So here we are, after a truly lovely evening around a big table in our own private room at Spencer's Steak House at the Hilton.
That's me with Hollis Chatelaine, Kathleen Glynn, Shirley Williams, Mary Fisher; Penny Morgan, then Victoria Adams Brown, Willa Fuller, Mary's best friend JoAnn, and Judith Montano.
Hollis and Mary are renowned artists, committed to social change through their work. (Mary gave a landmark speech at the Republican National Convention in 1992, on lifting the stigma of AIDS, which you can see here. It is incredible.) Hollis mounted this exhibit, Imagine Hope, at Festival. It was great to hear their discussion... Judith is mentor to all of us in crazy quilting, so it was a real treat to sit with her and talk shop, including publishing!
Thank you again, Kathleen, for an evening I'll never forget...

My next post will have the pictures I took of the quilts.....here is just one of my favorites:

Betsy Ross Never Imagined This
Nancy McLerran

Isn't this wonderful?