International Quilt Festival-Houston

      Well, I am recovered enough to do a little blogging!  Andrea (my daughter who came to spend the night) and I had a great time in Houston at the quilt show.  We did have a bit of a rocky start!!  We needed to be in Arlington at 5:30 AM to catch the tour bus...and Saturday night was the time change from daylight to standard time.  I changed my watch before I went to bed but left all the other clocks to deal with on Sunday (or let Dick mess with it while we were gone!)  So we set the alarm in our room to go off at nearly 5:00AM which would be 4:00 real time.  I knew we would need to leave by 4:45 to get where we needed to by 5:30.  I woke up several times and everytime I looked at the clock, I would mentally  subtract an hour.  Then about what I thought was 3:00, I heard Andrea up getting ready to go.  I thought "Oh, she has her time off!" and went back to sleep...When my alarm go off at ten til five (really ten til four) I got up...got ready to get in the shower, etc.  Andrea knocks on my door and says, "Mom, we need to be leaving right now!!"  I said, "Oh no, you have your time mixed up."  So to convince her, I checked my watch but sure enough she was right!!  Man, I cussed up a storm...brushed my teeth, threw on my clothes, grabbed my bag, jumped in the car, and drove like a bat out of Hell!!

     Fortunately, there were not vey many people out at that hour!  I tailed onto a pickup truck going well over the speed limit thinking the cops would stop them first!! And we arrived screeching into the bus lot right on time!!!!  I called Dick to let him know we were there...he realized what had gone wrong...the clock-radio we use is relatively new and we did not know that it was a smart clock that would reset itself!!!  I tell you..these new-fangled things will be the death of me!!!!!

Entering the George Brown Auditorium

One of the displays by the "12 x 12" gals

Wonderful thread art and dyeing

Love these cattails!!!

From the Nature group...such wonderful dimension!

Three dimensional houses by several artists

Created with white thread on black fabric

More thread painting

Gorgeous colors...great fabrics!

A closeup of a really neat quilt!

Isn't this just out of this world!!!

Taken from across the hall...The quilt in the center on the wall was done by a good friend of mine.  It appears in the newest Texas Legacy Quilt Book....the whole exhibit is fabulous!!

     It was a wonderful show....there were several exhibits that you couldn't take pictures of  so this is a sampling of some of my favorites that I could take.  I think this show had more of the "art quilt" variety that usual....maybe the genre is becoming more popular!!!  Sure hope so!!!

Life Back to Normal...(whatever normal is)

" Wish for Sunshine, but build dikes." Chairman Mao-Little Red Book

I like this quote....especially for this time of year!  Spring is having a hard time getting here...it got down to freezing again this weekend and, although we had none, our daughter had about eight or more inches of snow and she is only an hour Northeast from us.

I have been spending way too much time on my guild's 2010 Donation Quilt.  I volunteered to do it, designed it then collected fabric from our members...made up kits for members to check out and make 1/2 square triangle blocks.  There are 840 3" blocks in the quilt; the overall size is 90" x 106".  The design I had planned to make is not exactly how it ended up...funny how things on 1/4" grid paper look different when put up on a design wall!  I didn't have anyone here to hold it up so this is what it looks like laid out on the floor and then spread on our bed.

I may have to buy a lot of the raffle tickets myself as it looks pretty good there!!  I have been wanting to make a new quilt for our bed anyway since we got a new mattress...none of our old quilts fit it just right.

Now that I have completed this project, I need to finish my winter swap quilt that is to go to Germany. I have it made, only need to quilt it and get it mailed off.  I have emailed the reciepient and she was very nice about it coming late!  I have recieved mine from England and it is just lovely!!  And I don't think I ever posted my fall  mini swap from from Germany!  I have really enjoyed making and recieving these little quilt.

Notes on a few other things we've been doing:

• 
  
  daughter Andrea has gotten moved into her first home; we all went up to help her get some unpacking done
• 
  
  took the grands and their parents to Red Lobster for the kids' first taste of lobster...very disappointed..we have eaten there before but this time, the food was not up to par...I am trying to encourage them to try lobster some other time!
• 
  
  our daughters and grands took a trip to visit their grandma in Missouri...she is 91 this year.
• 
  
  and I am reading Stephen King's latest novel..."Under the Dome"..it is pretty good but, as usual, VERY long...over 1000 pages..very weighty to hold up in bed!

Hot and hotter!!

My round robin quilt All of studioQ's round robin quilts

Our studio Q met Monday at Bethany's. She demonstrated using Shiva Paintstix on fabric...pretty neat! Probably something I will need to get someday!! We showed off our newest "recipe" blocks. Above, are my two...the top is th newest one...overlapping blocks..and the lower one is the first we did...whimisical. Our next "ingredient" is going to be a real challenge! It is "black and white teeth"....now, it should be interesting to see how everyone interprets that!! We are meeting at Wendy's for our July meeting. Also have poste the pics of my Round Robin quilt and then all of our Round Robin quilts. We are going to all finish them and put them into the show in September.

Over a hundred for the temperature again today...our tomato crop is about gone...didn't really have too many this year. Strange weather...too cool/wet; then too hot/dry! Ahhh, Texas!!

I am working on my log cabin challenge. I decided since I was promoting it for the show I should probably make one too. So far I am liking it pretty well...just making a pretty quick one so don't really expect anything from it. I also need to work on my group quilt and maybe one more if I have time. I do have one finished....my red and greens Inner City which I think I have posted earlier.

Still no rain!

Today was hot and sunny! It is beautiful and would appreciate the sun if we didn't need rain so badly! And I had fixed veggie/beef soup for dinner...it is supposed to be much cooler by the end of the week so maybe we will have it again and it will be more enjoyable!

I did finish my inventory for the guild library today, just need to double check it and tweak a couple of things; then need to put the pockets and check out cards in the "new" books. After that I can take them to the next guild meeting and be done with it!!! Once I got started, it really wasn't that bad of a job; I just procrastinated too long!

I now have my next block from the Creative Crones on my design wall to add to...it is very neat! I like to put the new ones up to think about what I want to do. I have a pretty good idea for this one, but will let the idea "bake" for a few days. I would like to publish it, but I don't want to show it until we have our final trade. When we have them all, I will publish all of them.

I am also working on a quilt for a friend who really likes my"Southwest Twister". I never like to do the same thing twice so I am making this one from a "Snail's Trail" design and it will have tesselating colors, too.

I first named this one "The One that Got Away" but changed it to "Southwest Twister"

Today while we were eating breakfast and reading the Sunday paper (a lengthy event!), a flock of Cedar Waxwings landed in a tree right outside the window. There must have been about 50 of them! They were just passing through on their migration South...they stuck around most of the morning then took off. They fly as one; when one takes off, they all do in unison!