Howdy from Houston 2

Yesterday was a busy day for us.  After breakfast Hennie and I managed to find a couple of caches in Downtown Houston.  It was pretty windy and a bit chilly but we found two geocaches.

Then it was off to the Quilt Fesitval to check out some of the quilts and hit the market stalls.  The quilts were absolutely stunning and it never ceases to amaze me the amount of creativity people have.  There was a good variety of traditional and contemporary quilts as well as some terrific art quilts.  Something for everyone.

Then it was time to go and check out some of the vendors.  There were the usually array of beautiful fabrics to choose from as well as new tools and the latest gadgets.  We spent from 10.30 till 6.45pm looking at quilts and shopping and even then we didnt make it to the other end of the building.  This gives you an idea of the sheer size of the Festival.

I even got my photo taken with Alex Anderson the host of the "Simply Quilts"show and now co-host together with Ricky Timms from "The Quilt show".

You can tell that I come from Singapore as I was the only one wearing a thick ski jacket!

Hennie and I found most of the things that we were looking for and at reasonable prices (compared to Holland and Singapore).  The choice is also HUGE here.







Today we spent the day with Glenda, a friend from mine that lived in Singapore and is now back in Houston.
She picked up us this morning and we spent the day checking out the craft shops including our favourite "the Hobby Lobby".  There is just no shop in either Holland or Singapore that can compare to the sheer volume and choice of what can be found here.

We then went for a yummy (but HUGE) lunch at the Texas Roadhouse.

Hennie,Glenda and I

After lunch we went back to Glendas house and met up with the rest of the family including a really smart dog called Blake. This dog is so smart it even closes the door behind him!
We had a wonderful day with Glenda and it was wonderful to catch up with her again.  Thank you Glenda!

crop circles

Today I spent the day "playing" with my circle maker on my sewing machine.

I layered the light squares under the dark squares from yesterday and pinned them together trying to make sure that all the seams matched.  There are about a million pins in this and I kept pricking myself on them during the day. Ouch!  This quilt has my own hand dyed fabrics in it.

Then I made lovely circles and cut away the excess fabric to expose the lighter colours underneath.

The small picture that is hanging next to the quilt top is a quilt by Libby Lehman which is my inspiration for this quilt.  I saw  this on the Quilt show and just loved it!   Not that my stitching would come anywhere close to be as good as hers as she is an expert!

I used to religiously watch the show "Simply Quilts' in NZ and was completely gutted when they cancelled it.  Imagine my delight to find that I could subscribe to the new show "The Quilt Show" online with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims! Its shows like this that really promote our craft and I have learnt so much from these two shows!

Last night Hennie and I booked our classes for the Houston Quilt Festival.  Yippee!

Anyway thats all for now

Happy Quilting!