International Quilt Festival in Houston this week!

The 2017 International Quilt Festival is in Houston this week! It is my favorite week of the year with so much eye candy, shopping, picking up on new trends in the quilting world and admiring the creativity of all the quilts on exhibit! This year I attended with my lovely sister, Gretchen.

On Wednesday night, first we shopped. It was a magical night because the Astros were also playing in Game 7 of the World Series. Texting hubby back and forth for game updates helped with the butterflies in our stomachs. We didn’t find out till our bus brought us to our cars at the end of the night that we had won!

But back to the quilt festival! Our first stop was the booth with the Fat Quarter Queen fat quarters! One of our goals was to look for teal fat quarters for a quilt we are planning to memorialize our sister, Mary, who lost her battle with Ovarian Cancer this year. MD Anderson has an Ovarian Quilt project where they auction off donated quilts. The funds raised are used to raise awareness and research funds for ovarian cancer. The auction is going on now through November 8. They also had a booth at the festival. Our perfect fat quarter for Mary’s quilt came with a teal background with black cats. It was purchased at KimonoMomo, who specializes in Japanese Textiles. She had fabric you don’t see in your local quilt shops.

“Mary could never have cats. She was allergic to them. But she rescued one once,” Gretchen said.

Perfect … then this fabric HAS to go into her quilt. We don’t have a quilt pattern yet. But colors could be black and white and teal … but that could change. Still we have a start!

Just a few of the many interesting quilt booths were Keri Designs, booth 605. This one has a special place in my heart. This designer is from Hawaii and has taken the artist, Charlie Harper’s artwork, which I LOVE, and turned them into quilt patterns. Another booth from Hawaii, was Quilt Passions, which hosts quilting retreats and classes for quilters. Now that is what I am talkin’ about! They are in their ninth year of hosting these retreats.

One of the huge trends we noticed was lots of wool. Check out booth 518, Carried Away Designs in Wool. Eye of the Beholder Quilt Design, booth 848, was giving demonstrations on reserve applique. It is one of skills that when you see it with your own eyeballs … you believe it can be done. Try to read about how to do it in a book and … Yuck. She had some very lovely patterns and quilt kits available. We lingered at a couple of booths from the Netherlands. Since our mother was born there we have a connection. Dutch Heritage had some lovely cotton reproductions of antique Dutch Chintzes. I purchased some in a large chunk, I think they measure in meters, in blue and cream. We also visited a booth on some fairly new technology called Cricut. My lovely friend, Michele, told us about this booth. This machine does some interesting custom things you have to see to believe. Yes … quilters will certainly benefit but also paper crafters and so many more areas of the craft world like 3D puzzle projects, cards, sewing patterns, iron-ons and so much more. These little machines come in several price points.

So this year I purchased a stack of fat quarters and only one pattern, a scrappy-looking house/tree quilt called “By the Numbers” by Debbie Wendt of Wendt Quilting. A real stash buster which was just what I was looking for.

With only 30 minutes to spare before the bus picked us up to take our group back to Kingwood, Gretchen and I headed over to the exhibit area to drool over the lovely quilts on exhibit. I snapped just a few photos for you to enjoy the diversity of what is out there in the quilt world. My favorite was the 15-foot long fish quilt. The artist is from Japan and when I watched the video of how he made it I was in awe. That is precisely why I also included some close-ups. My favorite was the turtle.

The International Quilt Festival in Houston ends Sunday … so get your walking shoes on and get on down to the George R. Brown Convention Center!