Rhonda Bracey: At Random

When you’re a sewer (or ‘sewist’ as some would like to call us), you have an affinity with others who sew, especially those who have passed. In my recent US travels I came across the burial places of many sewers 😉 You only have to look down to find them — they are scattered and memorialised in the streets of cities like New York and Boston! Here are some I found, and some other pieces of beauty seen when looking down…

In memory of B5, a Boston sewer of great repute

Drain, a cousin of a sewer

No-one is buried here, but there’s beauty in the things you walk on

Not a sewer, but it should be — that’s a quilting pattern!

The tomb of the unknown sewer

Ah! Our friend, the sanitary sewer!

Look carefully — this was our XXX-rated sewer

Not a sewer, but a beautiful art deco way to surround a street tree in NYC

NYC is full of people from all over the world — our Indian sewer is buried here

Tampa/St Petersburg, March 2017

Some more!!

Our last full day in Houston today, and the last day of the 2016 Houston International Quilt Festival.

I was off to the vendor mall first thing to get a sewing machine tote that will double as an extra suitcase. Got a reasonable deal too 😉 Then it was off to view the quilts I wanted to see more closely.

I was particularly taken with one small exhibit — the Cherrywood fabric challenge, which this year was on The Lion King. Each participant got a yard of the same colour fabric from Cherrywood, then had to use other Cherrywood fabrics to complete their 20 x 20 piece. These were small art quilts but they were just stunning. There was some superb artistry in these works. I’ve highlighted just a few of them here.

We have our farewell drinks and dinner tonight and then it’s back to the normality of everyday life.

Again, no photos today as I’ve been busy with classes. The morning one was on a design method taught by Laura Lee Fritz. It’s quite clever, but I’m not sure I’ll use it a lot. I did enjoy the class, though.

The second was a long-arm quilting design class by Dusty Farrell — I liked his approach (‘bread and butter’ quilting) and the opportunity we had to play on the long-arm machines.

I then tackled the vendor mall for the last time, and was pleasantly surprised by how quiet it was after 5pm on a Saturday — I must remember that for the next time, if there is a next time.

I passed on dinner tonight (I had a BIG serve of ‘to go’ guacamole from Pappasito’s at lunch), and instead shared 12 Cadbury salted caramel bites with one of the other girls from our group while we had a hot chocolate and a natter in my room.

Tomorrow I go back to look closely at the quilts that inspired me on Wednesday night. Then packing for the trip home. We have our final drinks and dinner as a group tonight, where farewells will be said, and hugs will be given.

No photos today! I was too busy learning and doing in my all-day class with the awesome Melinda Bula — Fantastic Fusible Flowers: Hibiscus. What a wonderful teacher she is.

Tomorrow I have another full day of classes — one in the morning on designing, and a long-arm quilting one in the afternoon. Then my classes are all done, leaving me Sunday to return to the quilt exhibition and study the quilts more closely. And pack. We start our flights back to Australia on Monday.

Some of the more unusual or quirky things I saw at the Houston International Quilt Festival this year:

This was a welcome relief for some partners, I’m sure! Recliners, sports on a big screen TV… (though I think it should just be called “The Lounge” or similar)

Ouch!

I only added this because it’s not often you see a group of men inspecting a Dear Jane quilt with the intensity that these guys were

Another all-day class for me today — Painting with Tsukineko Inks, with Judy Coates Perez teaching. She’s a lovely lady, a good teacher, and we got good value for money for our Materials Fee (a set of 12 inks and applicators, fabric, and other goodies). I learned quite a bit, including the use of aloe gel as a medium for painting with these inks using brushes. I wonder who figured out that aloe gel would work so well?

Would I use these techniques again? Very likely, but not often. They are very time consuming.

Below are some photos of the work Judy and daughter have done using the techniques she taught us.

And here are my efforts — The first photo is from the morning where we learned to use the applicator and lend colours; the second is from the afternoon when we applied the inks and aloe gel with paint brushes. I was quite pleased with the passion flower from the afternoon; the leaves? not so much…

Tonight I leave the hotel for the first time to have dinner at a local restaurant with an Australian guy I used to work with in Perth, and his wife.

Our first full day in Houston! First up for me was an all-day class. The least said about it the better, but suffice to say I lodged a formal complaint with the Festival’s Education Office the next morning.

At lunchtime, I caught up with Kim, the owner of Quilting Adventures in Texas, and we shared stories for two very short hours (all-day classes get a two-hour lunch). No margaritas were consumed!

At 5pm the preview night opened for class attendees — this allowed us two hours of unfettered access to the quilt exhibition and the vendor mall. Both are HUGE. After two hours, the public could gain access.

It took me four hours of quick walking to cover the entire area (the total area of the three exhibit halls is some 82,000 square metres), take some 250 photos of just a few of the amazing quilts, and buy most of the things on my list (it was a short list!). My feet and back were done by then, so I crashed in my room — too tired to write this blog post and to process the photos. Later…

In my first hour at the Houston International Quilt Festival, I joined Monika who was on our tour two years ago in the bar for a quick chat. I went to the bar to get my drink and ran into Marilyn, a wonderful quilter and gorgeous person who I sat at a table with for 5 days in Pam Holland’s class at Empty Spools, Asilomar in Feb 2014. She introduced me to Noriko, who is famous in our world.

Then while waiting in line to get into Winners Circle, who should be standing next to me but Sara, who I’ve shared 5-day workshops with several times at Quilting Adventures in New Braunfels, Texas!

When I warned the row behind me at Winners Circle that they were surrounded by Australians, who should stand up and give me a hug but Connie, a quilter I also met at Asilomar! Connie won two ‘Honorable Mentions’ for her quilts this year.

I wonder who I’ll catch up with today?

Up early this morning to check out of the Millennium Broadway hotel and get on the road to LaGuardia Airport. There’s MAJOR construction going on there, so it was a bit confusing for our poor bus driver, but we got there in the end, got checked in without any hassle, and with plenty of time to spare to grab some (expensive and crappy) breakfast and/or lunch at the airport.

Our flight to Houston left a bit late, and there was a terrible noise in the plane coming from what sounded like a dog barking, but was most likely a pump not working correctly. Obviously the pilot and flight attendants weren’t worrying about it, and once we took off, the noise stopped. It started up in a big way when we landed, though. The flight was uneventful. Some of the girls slept, others chatted, or made hexies, or read. Finally, we were in Houston for the International Quilt Festival (IQF) — the ultimate reason for our trip!

Once we’d checked into our rooms, we headed to the registration desk to pick up totes, pins, etc. then met again early in the evening to get in line for Winners’ Circle, where all the Festival prize winners are announced and the winning quilts in each category are revealed. Wow! What a stunning array of quilts. Some have taken thousands of hours (often years), thousands of pieces of fabric, and many kilometres of thread to make. The skill and artistry has to be seen to be believed. Every one has been made from fabric and thread, and what some of these artists can do with that medium is just phenomenal and truly inspirational.

If you’re a Houston resident and have never been to IQF, do yourself a favour and come along to the convention centre for a couple of hours from Thursday 3 Nov to Sunday 6 Nov 2016. Just come to view the quilts; ignore the vendor mall if you have no interest in it. I think it costs about $12 to enter.

(Oh, and one of our tour leaders, Helen Godden from Canberra, won first prize in the ‘Art – Painted Surface’ category, for her work [in collaboration with batik artist Jonathan S Evans of Colorado] — ‘Faces of India’. Way to go, Helen!!!!)

This quilt won the Gammill Master Award for Contemporary Artistry and $5000 cash at the Houston International Quilt Festival. Tell me this isn’t art! I absolutely love it. For those interested: It’s raw edge applique, machine stitched. And it’s BIG. ‘Unknown man’ by Marina Landi and Maria Lucia Azara (Brazil).

The quilt below won ‘Best of Show’ and a $12,500 cash prize. In her artist’s statement, she said it took her a year to make and she used some 8400 pieces of fabric. Look at how she’s captured the reflections in the water! Reflections of Cape Town, by Cynthia England (Texas).