A look inside the Houston Quilt Festival

I am lucky to live in the city of Houston because for one week every year we get to hold the International Quilt Festival. After last week, it is great to have readers with such kind words for me (thank you so much for your support everyone) and friends like my best sewing buddy Holly to get me out and going again. We spent excessive time exploring the quilt festival this weekend. It takes place in the George R. Brown Convention Center downtown and is massive! It consists of two parts: the award winning drool worthy quilts I can't even comprehend how are made and the crazy marketplace in which you buys tons of stuff you didn't even know existed and get totally inspired.

The winners:

OK, these aren't the actual winners, which you can Google. These are my personal winners.

The above quilt features Swavorski Elements. What they lack in cuddle appeal they make up for in sparkle. They really added to this very beautiful quilt.

The above quilt looked very simple with the Chicago skyline featured. I love the Chicago skyline. I grew up there, and when my family moved to Dallas I cried because when I saw the Dallas skyline I had been tricked. I thought I had moved to a city, not the country! The bead work on this quilt was beautiful and made this simple quilt fantastic.

Did you think there would be a post without a dog? Heck no! This was an award winning quilt featuring an "American Dingo" I read that to mean mutt dog. You know how I love me some mutt dog.

Here we got into the market place. This quilt was made of minky and cuddle fabrics. Minky and cuddle fabrics were everywhere. It was so soft and cuddly. I may need to back my next quilt with minky.

Giant rick-rack was also everywhere. I love the idea of it in lieu of an actual binding on a blanket. I'm still working out in my head if it is workable for a quilt.

This was a cute gift bag that I was inspired by that would be the perfect size for w wine bottle gift.

I just liked this pillow. It is simple, but the felt balls in the middle are just fun.

Turns out Holly and I are actually secret hipsters that both love all things owls. How cute are these potholders? I plan to dissect the picture and create a tutorial on this soon.

Check me out on the long arm. Le sigh...

So cute! It is a Christmas decoration, but notice some more giant rick rack being featured? H.O.T. Hot I tell you!

 The two pillows above are made of ribbon with fabric just framing the ribbon on the sides. Love it!

Remember my crazy zipper love? Well Ghee's, the company I wrote about, was there. I was star struck to meet Linda, the head zipper guru.

Check out her self embellished sweater featuring a great zipper decoration. The ladies at the booth were amazing and the zippers are even better in person!

Above is an example of crazy zipper love going to far. Just kidding! I totally get it! This is a fellow zipper lover at Vogue Fabric's of Evanston, IL. Holly and I did go a little crazy here getting cuts of beautiful fabrics at reasonable prices. Expect to see a pretty floral Violet out of me soon! I think I may do more shopping with Vogue in the future as their web site looks pretty comprehensive.

Spoiler Alert: The above pen is magic! It is a Pilot Frixion pen. I wrote a self promoting message above.... scroll down below....if you think you can handle it....

Here I am ironing half of it.....

And the self promoting message is gone! The secret is this pen has ink that goes invisible at 140 degrees. Friction (Frixion) = heat! Get it! Instead of friction you can use an iron to make the ink invisible. If you accidentally iron your marks, you can make it reappear by placing your fabric in the freezer overnight (disclaimer: I haven't tried that just yet). To remove the ink simply wash it as normal after you are done.

So far I have used it on cotton, polyester and satin and it has worked on all three. I bought two and can barely contain my excitement over them.

Oh, we made a hat too. More on that this week! Happy Sunday everyone.