Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Today was our second and final day at Handi Quilter.

The morning was devoted to ruler work (not my favourite activity… I really don’t have the patience for it).  After another delicious lunch,  we had a demo of graffiti quilting from the lovely Karlee Porter,  followed by an afternoon using the couching foot and various yarns. The couching foot on my machine played up (I had two of the best and most knowledgeable in the world working on it,  plus a technician from downstairs in production,  before it decided to behave, so I only ended up doing about an hour of couching.

After the day’s activities were over we were presented with our ‘graduation’ certificates from the Handi Quilter University,  then we all piled into shuttles to go to a Chinese restaurant for dinner with the Handi Quilter educators.

Tonight was spent repacking much of my luggage. Tomorrow is another full day,  this time in Salt Lake City itself,  followed by our last group dinner and a very special treat afterwards. We won’t get back to the hotel until quite late and have to check out early the next morning. Most will be flying back to Australia on Friday,  but I’m staying with friends in northern Utah for the weekend and will fly home on Sunday.

Our QuiltVenture 2014 is almost over 😦

Some photos from today…

Oops! I think we’ve all sewn something to the back that we shouldn’t have!

Karlee showing how she graffiti quilts

Karlee’s work

The Chinese restaurant had a special menu for those with different dietary requirements.  I thought this was a clever way to do this.

We got a great welcome from the Handi Quilter people today when we arrived,  and the CEO gave us a guided tour of their new facility. We saw the massive assembly area,  testing area,  TV studio,  etc and of course the main training room upstairs where we spent today and where we will be tomorrow too.

There are heaps of beautiful quilts on all the walls in the administration area of the building and in all the offices.

Our training today was the basics of tension, needles, and thread, with 10 practice pieces using all sorts of threads (metallics, monofilament, silk, etc.). After lunch we worked on micro quilting, practising on printed fabrics and then applying that to our project piece.

The lovely people at Handi Quilter served us lunch,  provided free water and sodas and nibbles,  and put on supper for us too,  after an amazing trunk show of antique quilts quilted in a modern style.

Tomorrow we have more training (ruler work and couching), followed by dinner with the team (we have 5 trainers in the room to help us all!).

Here are a few photos from today…

Helen Godden presenting the CEO of Handi Quilter with her couched quilt of Montana for his office

Happy trainers!

Trainers on kangaroos

Trainers,  Helen Godden,  and Karlee Porter

Busy working

Ricky Tims is a famous quilter who lives in and has a studio in La Veta, CO. We were fortunate and very privileged to be able to spend a day with him today, learning all sorts of techniques and tricks, and shared dinner with him and Justin.

A day for learning and laughing. And for admiring his work and some quilts from his personal collection. In addition, Ricky played some of his own compositions for us.

And some of us saw some of the mule deer that wander the streets of La Veta.

Here are a few of the many photos I took today.

Note: These are MY impressions only,  and reflect no-one else’s point of view.

General impressions of the Houston International Quilt Festival:

• It is HUGE. Not big… HUGE! I walked about 10 km just going up and down the aisles of the exhibition and the vendor market in one pass. There were 21 main aisles of quilt exhibitions,  and a similar number of vendor aisles.
• The quality of the quilts and quilting on display was just stunning. This is the best of the best, after all.
• The mix of exhibitions and vendors and eating areas is about the same as the Perth Craft Fair (the only other exhibition like this I’ve been to),  but on  a much much bigger scale.
• It is very well organised, from registration and class information and enrolment beforehand, through to the organisation on the day (all class were well signposted, names of attendees were checked off for the smaller classes and codes on your name badge have you entry to the bigger sessions, name badges were colour coded to indicate who was permitted where and when,  etc.)
• Crowds didn’t seem to be as crushed as the Perth show.  That could be because of slightly wider aisles in the vendor area, and just the sheer size of the place which meant people were more spread out.
• There weren’t many white glove people in the exhibition area. I was surprised by that as there were some very valuable quilts on display and quilters do like to see the back of a quilt 😉
• Houston Police were noticeable. I’m not sure they were the only security (I suspect not) but they were stationed at most entrances and were wandering the halls.
• I suspect shoplifting must be a real problem for the vendors. Many booths had product on display that was out of sight of the booth people,  and had lots of little knick knacks that would be easy to conceal  for anyone who wanted to steal.
• There were lots of very overweight people,  many of whom were riding hired scooter things. These scooters were a pain to negotiate if you were wandering the vendor mall as the rider could come to a sudden stop to look at something.
• Most of the attendees at the exhibitions and the vendor mall and in the classes were women, but I was surprised at how many men attended too, who didn’t seem to be just coming along with their wives. This is good.
• As I expected, the age demographic was skewed over 50, but there were a surprising number of young people too. You have to have young people rising up, otherwise these sorts of events will die out.
• Many of the tutors I was exposed to were well over 65, with some quite a bit older. It’s gratifying to see these women taking on a new lease of life after retiring from jobs such as engineers,  computer programmers, etc.

And now it’s all over and I can tick it off my bucket list 😉