Just Checkin' In

Life's been a little crazy. We had family obligations (which included entertaining) for the weekend. I've been hustling to keep up with the merchandising. It was a very busy week for merchandising last week

Sadly, not a lot of sewing time. In fact, not a lot of anything fun time.

The shower got resealed (not regrouted....but strangely, the price to do the lesser job was the same, go figure). Not sure if it's really solved the problem yet as the tile guy doing the sealing removed the faucet and put it on wrong, so after the sealant had dried I went to take a shower and discovered the knob would only turn a quarter turn, which fell into the 'cold' water zone. Sorry, I like my showers hot.

They sent another bonehead out to fix it this morning. In the meantime, we've left the hole open in the kitchen ceiling so we can tell if the sealing process has cured the leak. Fingers crossed. The handyman comes Thursday to take a look at that and a couple other projects that we can throw more money at, so hopefully all will be well for Thanksgiving.

Got the Sew Steady table yesterday, put on the old Sew Slip mat, pulled out the Quilt Halo, connected the BSR and did a little freemotion practice in the fifteen free minutes I had last night between getting home from work and starting dinner. During that time I realized that the presser foot on this new machine is out of whack, it's not centered. The needle is barely a whisper away from the edge on the #37 foot. Guess all those quarter inch seams I've been sewing since I got the machine are off. Hopefully it's a minor adjustment that can be made when I'm at the shop for classes in a couple weeks.

I did have a couple hours to pull together some projects on Saturday. I got the border sewn on this and got it on the pinning table. Decided to forgo the basting spray and just pinned, heck, it's small, what does it matter? Big mistake! Flipped it over and it's got the wrinklies. Now I need to unpin it and start over. This is what happens when you rush.

Today was the day to make the hotel reservations for Houston next year. My sister says she doesn't want to go to Houston, she'd rather go to Paducah (because that's where her friend would rather go). Paducah is the same weekend as our guild show, and it's been getting some unflattering press lately due to the show hotel closing and the Paducahan economy tanking. The people that run the Paducah show will also do a show in Lancaster this year so I can check that out without having to drive 10 hours and pay for a hotel room shared with women who go to bed a good 4 hours before I do :).
Anyway, I digress. I figured I could go to Houston by myself and take classes, however,  I was put off by the nonrefundable deposit I'd have to make, so I decided to not make the reservation. We'll see what happens. It's a year away. And since it's just me and I'm not looking for an elusive hotel 'suite' for 3, I'm sure I can find a single room come Spring, should I decide that I have to go. It's hard to reserve a hotel and plunk down that deposit when you don't know what the classes are that you'd be taking...do I reserve a hotel room for the entire week? What happens if I only need to be there 4 nights? Too much to think about today--definitely not worth the hassle of playing phone redial all morning trying to get through to reserve a room at the Hilton.

And before I allow the whole Christmas decorating scene to fly out of my control (which can easily happen, trust me), once all our guests left on Sunday night I went upstairs and worked on the tree in the master bedroom. Almost done. Needs the top decorated and that should be it. Here's a couple photos of how it's shaping up. Gee, only 15 or 16 more trees to go!

Why can't it be the weekend ?!

Friday at the Quilt Festival

It was a beautiful morning in Houston today. The humidity blew out to sea and the temperature dropped a good 10 degrees. A lovely walk to Convention Center.

Started out the morning in the Vendor area. This is Eleanor Burns signing books. She gave a nice demo on how to make 3 quilt tops from one jelly roll, and since I have a few lying about, I bought her show special package to do this.

Here's an overhead view of the vendor area. There are 18 aisles. Don't think for a minute that you are going to remember where you saw something and go back for it later. In fact, if you're heading down an aisle and stop to browse, you're most likely going to forget which direction you were headed. At least that happened to me a couple of times.

After going upstairs and wasting a half an hour for a prearranged meet-up with members of my guild---none of which, btw, showed up for,  I headed back to start checking out the exhibits. My first impression on seeing this was 'no wonder people are afraid of clowns'.

This next quilt won one of the big prizes. It's amazing. Machine applique, machine quilted (on an older Bernina). The quilt was submitted last year and returned. Wasn't even considered. Wins big this year. (Apparently that happened to Ricky Tims a few years back...entry rejected one year, wins the next).

The quilt below was another example of some marvelous, intriquite quilting. You've got to smile when you look at this one.

This is a closeup of what I heard someone said is an Advent Calendar quilt.

 

After viewing all the quilts, as you can guess, I had to head back in to the vendor area....this time it was for a very small taste of embellishments. Houston, we may have created a monster here.....

This is the HandiQuilter $10,000 winner of Best in Show. I walked past it this morning and took a photo for you. Tomorrow is my quilt day, though my sister said I should have gone this afternoon as the exhibition hall was quite empty. Everyone was in with the vendors.

Here's some more eye candy for you.

This artist really loved puzzles...look at the lid of the box.

Tomorrow is my show day. When i was buying Ghana indigo, the vendor told me to be sure to see the exhibit of Asian indigo quilts, so now I'm on a mission.

Today's shopping was fabuloso. French fabric, Ghanan indigo, Asian indigo, Japanese fabric, German buttons. They don't call this the International Quilt Festival for nothing.

I am so glad I didn't go to Vegas this year and feed my money into the slot machines. Quilt Festival shopping has been the most fun.

I was also hoping to meet some of the Pickle Road Posse (Mark Lipinski's online group). That was lame...one pos showed up at the designated meeting time....Sylvia from Texas. We talked embroidery. She was very helpful pointing me in the direction of arming myself with the necessary tools to use my new machine next week.  Thanks Sylvia.

Oh, and today I was told that I am a "Used to Sew Girl" or something to that effect by the people in the Schmetz needle booth. They did a little interview and took photos of me. I just hope they didn't turn out as bad as the one I took with Ricky Tims this morning. (I so need a haircut!)

Speaking of Ricky, I bought an instructional DVD and his new Christmas CD (my husband would kill me, I didn't even listen to it first, just bought it, blindly (or would that be 'deafly'), and we won't tell him that it cost $14.95, marked down from $16.95. But, I will say this, Ricky whips those things open and signs each of them, without even asking.\

Now, I'm walking past this other booth that seemed to have dozens of different CDs displayed..the kind of display you find in the drugstore with the falling rain/ocean waves/white noise CDs. As I walked past, some of sounded like trance music with a little classical thrown in. I guess it was supposed to be relaxing music to quilt by. Whatever. Anyway, I had to smile because someone was buying one and I heard the guy ask...."do you want an autograph?" Pretty sad when you have to ask someone if they want your autograph. I mean, if they did, they'd have asked you for it. Duh!

Well, it's 11 p.m. here in Houston. I woulld so like to go through my day's purchases, but my sister is asleep in the bedroom area, and her friend is asleep on the pull out couch here in the living room area, so I don't think I can make any noise rattling bags. Wait, my sister said I could make noise (yay for big sisters!)

Gotta run before she changes her mind.

If it's Thursday, we must be in Houston

Good morning Houston! Today's plan is to start the show with the vendors on a fabric quest. I expect it will be much more crowded today. It really wasn't too bad last night. But then, I'm sure there's a lot of quilters who would rather spend the $10 on fabric instead of a chance to shop for 3 hours.

Maybe we weren't in the right place at the right time, but I saw no super deals that were offered only during the Preview...no bags of silk scraps for half price, no half price FQs, so for the first entry in my "Lessons Learned in Houston: Things to Do Differently Next Year" book, saving the $300 a night hotel cost and skipping Preview is going to have to rank #1 on the list.

And the second entry is Be an informed buyer, do not make impulse purchases. The Sew Steady table I bought last night for a big 20% discount sells for the discounted price I paid, down to $20 less all over the Internet.

Well, it's my turn in the shower, be back later!

Welcome to Houston

Here we are, first photos at the Preview tonight. Doesn't look like a lot of people...that's because they all made a mad rush to the Souvenir stands to pick up programs, pins, t-shirts, coffee mugs, mouse pads, battery operated fans....We made a beeline to the nether regions...the farthest away booths and worked our way  to the beginning booths---path of least resistance.

Every thread manufacturer you've ever heard of, and some you haven't, has a booth at the show. I love the thread displays. So visual, so colorful, so organized. This is a job for me...arranging hundreds of spools of colord thread on tables. Almost makes me want to contact YLI, Sulky, etc. and offer to be their thread roadie.

This is where you'll find me tomorrow, if you're looking for me..the Hobbs batting booth. You can buy 18x18 pieces of all of the different battings they sell for 50 cents each.  This way you can try before you buy. Gotta love it!

Overwhelming? Yes. My goal was to just walk the vendor floor. That took 3 hours tonight. I only stopped to buy a few things...a couple spendy Bernina accessories (one of which was the 18x24 plexiglass table for my new machine,) and only because they were 20% off.

I got to sit down and machine quilt a bit using the silicone slider mat and the weighted circle frame---will most likely buy both of those tomorrow. Did not see anything Australian, But did see some authentic French fabrics I most likely have to have. Saw a great line of Mexican Day of the Dead prints, but they were outrageous. I think I saw them at another vendor's booth for way less. Will be checking that out.

Right now I need to to go to bed. I couldn't get a Ricky Tims photo tonight...not that I didn't have the opportunity--his booth was pretty quiet at the end, I just was all hot and sweaty. I did scope out his booth where he was selling his books, his CDs, his hand-dyed fabric (sadly, nothing to write home about compared to the other hand dyed fabrics available here at the show). He should have decorated his booth with convergence quilts...that would have sold him a ton of books. But who knows, maybe he did that last year.

Promise to take better photos tomorrow. I'm going to split my day between viewing quilts in the show and revisiting the vendors I thought I might want to shop at, but didn't tonight.

Have a great Thursday everyone!

Bloggers Quilt Festival - 2009

Here's my entry into this year's Bloggers Quilt Festival, which Park City Girl so graciously moderates each year.

The 'First Cloth Convergence' has borders on it. It's waiting to be sandwiched and quilted, which I seriously doubt I'm going to get to before we leave for Houston on Wednesday morning. If not, it will be the lucky 'first quilt' to have the dubious honor of being quilted on the new sewing machine, assuming that it is ready to pick up on my return.

This is my first foray into the Ricky Tims Church of High Convergence. I love this style and there's another version coming of this that is going to allow me to play with a more 'in your face' coloration to hopefully understand why you lay out what and where to make your point. But don't get me wrong, I like how this one turned out. It's got that 'fall' vibe going on.

This was also the first thing I've made using batiks. I do have two Bali Pops and a little set of FQs I picked up at a show this summer, but I think I went for those as they were easy....I wasn't overwhelmed with hundreds of bolts of subtly different fabrics calling to me ('pick me', 'pick me', 'no, pick me'). Having someone pick them for you makes it a little less daunting to start out on that path.

Speaking of Houston. Watch this space, because I'm going to put on my show correspondent hat and I plan to post nightly from the Marriott Courtyard in beautiful Downtown Houston, reporting on all things International Quilt Festival 2009. Those of you that have never been, can be as overwhelmed as I will be, this being my first time.....not to mention, you can shop with me (albeit vicariously) at the 500 vendors in the Convention Center.

Check back Wednesday night for my first report on Quilt Festival Preview 2009.

And be sure to visit Park City Girl's blog: