International Quilt Festival in Houston

We went the International Quilt Festival today. My sweet hubby went with me and we had a great time.

I guess I'm lucky to live in Houston because if I didn't I would never have gone to the Quilt Festival. The convention center where it's held, George R. Brown Convention Center, is huge. [off topic - I Googled George R. Brown, I didn't have a clue who he was...he was one of the original founders of Brown & Root, now KBR, Inc. and formally a subsidiary of Halliburton, the engineering and construction firm headquartered in Houston.] Anyway, I digress, the convention center was about half quilts on display and half trade market with every kind of quilt and quilt supply vendor you could ever think of.

I found a lot of stuff I really want, who wouldn't? But there were also a lot of booths with the same stuff. There was lots and lots of quilting fabric. And if you want to buy a quilt, there were lots of those as well. All the major sewing machine companies were there, so if you were considering a new machine, it's a great place to see all the machines. The most expensive thing I saw were the long arm quilting machines. The one I liked was $30,000! Thank goodness I don't quilt, I know I would be tempted to dream about having one.

The one thing I saw that I really think I will buy is a home pressing machine. The one I looked at was around $250 but the owner of the shop, who was from Atlanta, said he had another model that's perfectly good for about $150. I want it for Christmas! Yes, that means I will be able to fuse interfacing for a purse in about 10 minutes instead of the 1-1/2 hours it takes with my iron.

I bought a new pair of scissors for clipping curves. I like to clip very close to the seam and if I try to clip all the way down to the tip of the blade, they split. This happens because of the multiple layers of fabric all with interfacing. I found a pair made to cut rubber stamps so I tested them with eight layers of denim and they worked perfectly...so I bought them.

I also stopped and talked to the girls at Craftsy. What a great website and the girls were super sweet. So sweet I had to take their picture, see it to the left? I only found Craftsy last week and I have fallen in love with it. The classes they offer are top quality. I posted my Molly Handbag pattern over there and a ton of folks have come through my project post and signed up to get it. If you found my site from Craftsy and joined my mailing list, welcome and thank you for coming by.

Anyway, that's another year for the International Quilt Festival, it went off without a hitch and was pretty awesome!

Until next time ~

Reba