We are back from Houston. John taught 3 days and they were successful classes. Brooke and Kate staffed the booth which is always fun, but long days. The pre-cut kits were really popular and it was fun to watch quilters try to decide "which one?".
We have some rituals at Quilt Festival, mostly involving FOOD. We had a lovely dinner out with our friend and quilt teacher/author, Nancy Johnson-Srebro. On Tuesday night, we went to the IQA award ceremony, where all the winners are identified and the top quilts in each category are revealed. You can get right up to the quilts and admire and the quiltmakers are often there for you to congratulate. Our company sponsors the Merit Hand Quilting Award and this year, one of our favorite hand quilters, Hazel Canny, won First Prize in our category.
Then there was a wonderful and kind of noisy dinner at an authentic Mexican restaurant with our vendor friends. Saturday was the Silver Star Salute banquet for Silver Star recipient, Alex Anderson. All the top prize winners speak at the banquet and the quilter from Japan who won one of the top awards wore her traditional kimono and gave her entire speech in English which impressed all of us! It was great to see Alex's early quilts and learn about how she got in to quilting. John got to visit a minute with her Dad who has been on salmon fishing trips with them. On Sunday, after breakdown, we always go to a local Vietnamese restaurant which is near the Convention Center, tasty and too much to eat.
The little Silent Auction quilts went over well - and got lots of comments. Brooke's went for $75, Kate's for $225 and John's for $575, we think. Anyway, all for a good cause, the International Quilt Association. Some lucky quilter won Phil Beaver's beautiful raffle quilt but it wasn't me.
We had quilters from Spain, Australia, Canada, France, Great Britain, Japan and, we think, Belgium. This year was our 19th show at International Quilt Festival. You know what that means, next year is our 20th Anniversary!
My camera quit working right before the Show so I don't have nice quilt photos to share.
Kate flew home on Monday and was petting her dogs by 1:00 pm. John drove really hard and we got to Billings about 7:00 pm on Tuesday. We listened to CNN Election coverage all the way and were ready to take a break from news until the polls actually closed and results could be reported.
Next weekend, time off in Red Lodge. There may be snow; I know for sure it will be peaceful.
Brooke
No comments:
Post a Comment