Rhonda Bracey: At Random

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 😉

I only had one paid for class today – the Saturday Sampler. I went to six different stations in the two hours,  sampling various techniques on offer.

Then I met Karel from San Antonio for lunch and a long natter. It was great to see her again.

Next was a free demo in the ‘Paint’ section of the Crafts area just outside the food court, where Betty Busby was demonstrating a technique. I had hoped she would be demonstrating how she does the delicate work on her art quilts that feature cellular structures (Google her), but she wasn’t. Instead, she was demo’ing the torn edge technique with Shiva Paintstiks onto silk,  which was very similar to my first class on Tuesday.

So I left and checked out more of the vendor mall before heading back to the pool in the sky to have a swim.

I went out to dinner this evening with the lovely Sara and her delightful family.

That’s the end of my Houston classes. Tomorrow is the last day of the Festival,  and I’m done with the vendor mall,  so I’ll likely spend most of the day checking out the exhibitions more closely. And packing. We have to be ready to take the bus to the airport by 6:20am Monday morning!

Today started with Friday Sampler,  a two hour taster of 30 quiltmakers’ techniques.  Not all interested me,  but about six or so did and there was plenty of time to go to those stations plus a couple of others. Each presenter talked about an aspect of their process for about 10 minutes,  then people moved on to the next presenter. As with the Mixed Media Miscellany yesterday,  it all worked well.

After lunch I attended two lectures.  The first from Sue Nickels on the history of machine quilting using a domestic sewing machine (a history that goes back to about the 1870s based on the antique quilts Sue has collected). Interesting stuff.

The second lecture was on using software such as Photoshop Elements and EQ to design your quilts,  and services such as Spoonflower to print your designs. I got quite a lot out of this one and more investigation is needed!

My final class of the day was an evening one (6 to 9pm). Like the one the other day,  it was a long-arm class on borders. The tutor (DeLoa Jones) taught us quite different techniques than the previous class,  so I’m glad I did both. We were using Gammill machines,  with two on each 18ft frame. These are BIG setups,  but despite the size and weight of the machines, you can move them with a fingertip.

And it was Halloween today so many people dressed up, particularly the vendors.

I did two classes at Houston today. One was a long-arm class on figuring out border designs without using maths (for non quilters a long-arm is a really big quilting machine… Google it, or check the photo below). For the quilters: Cindy Franks was the tutor, and Karlee Porter was the Handi Quilter ‘go to’ person (we were on HQ Avante 18s).

The other was a taster class where 16 presenters are in a big room and 300 students move to the tables of the presenters they want to hear describe their techniques. It sounds more chaotic than it was and I got to go to the four I wanted to listen to… One on thread painting,  one on heliography,  one on using man-made materials like Tyvek,  and one on creating images when you can’t draw.

Not many photos today as what I did didn’t lend itself to photos.

The photo above is the back!

The quilt exhibitions and the vendor market opened at 5pm today for VIPs and those doing classes. By 7pm when it opened to the public, I’d finished walking the 47+ exhibitions and taking lots of photos (about 125). By 9pm, I’d finished walking the vendor mall and scanning all 1100! booths. I bought a couple of small things and that will likely be it 😉

According to my Fitbit, I walked 15500 steps, almost 11km, today. My walking shoes (Skechers GoWalk2) held up well, but I’m done in!

Tomorrow the festival opens to the public for the next four days. I’ve got quite a few classes tomorrow and Friday,  so I’m unlikely to go back to the exhibition or the vendor market until Saturday or Sunday.

I’ve included a sample of the amazing quilts below… Be aware that there were a lot of traditional quilts on display,  but my interests lie more with the art and modern quilts,  so you won’t find many photos of traditional quilts. These are not your grandmothers’ quilts.

I attended Winners Circle at the Houston International Quilt Festival last night. This is where the winners of each category are announced,  along with the major prize winners and Best of Show. After the presentations,  we could wander among the quilts.  They were all truly amazing works of art.

The winner was a 19th century snow scene, which was spectacular, but my favourite of all those beautiful pieces was the horses.

However, photos cannot do these quilts justice. They are just STUNNING. I think I’ll hang up my needle and thread right now…

The George R Brown Convention  Center is enormous. The views from the circle windows upstairs show just a tiny section of the wholesale market stalls. When the exhibition opens to the public tomorrow (class attendees get a preview tonight) it takes up half the ground floor of the convention centre with the vendor mall taking the other half. The wholesale vendors loaded out after 3 days yesterday and the retail vendors load in today.

Just to give you some idea of the size:
* 65,000 attendees
* 5,000 class attendees
* 415 classes
* approx. 50 quilt exhibitions in the exhibition hall with I don’t know how many quilts on display
* more than 550 vendor booths
* this is the only event that takes up the three full floors of the massive convention centre – ground floor is the quilt exhibitions and vendor mall (retailers selling fabrics,  notions,  machines etc); second floor is admin (registration,  enrolment,  class info,  Starbucks,  FedEx office etc),  and third floor is classes (seems to be hundreds of rooms!)
* one person I know who attended last year walked 32,000 steps at Festival in one day alone!

This is why it’s the ‘holy grail’ for quilters.