First Time To Houston!

Hello Ladies! This post finds me finally feeling recovered from a busy 12 days from home to be in Houston for Quilt Market and Festival! It was a great time! I'll share the adventure with some photos...

First up- the Iowa Hillbillies head for Houston!

Time for a little stitching along the way! I wasn't sure if Quiltmania would have my sample back to me so I wanted to be sure to have it for showing in the booth. Even in the car, stitching was relaxing.

Will it all fit in the booth ??!!

Somehow it always does fit, Thank Goodness!!

 

Except for the extra for Festival!

 

So fun to share my Starch Basting technique!

Last May I introduced the Starch Brush at Market and this fall, Missie's Fingertip Stiletto made its debut!

Time has been so short recently I have not had much time to spare, so I have not even told all of you about this new notion. Production was absolutely filled with lessons learned and I appreciate every cool tool in our quilting stores! What an adventure! This notion, Missie's Favorite Fingertip Stiletto, is used to hold the hot freezer paper after the iron has been on it. It is bent the proper way for how I am using it as a fingertip extension and has coils that fit around all sizes of fingers, knuckles and fingertips! It's available HERE on my website if you are interested!

 

So fun to see old friends and new... Jamie Wallen was across the aisle- he purchased my new pattern, French Diamonds, and I can't wait to see how his version looks! Lisa DeBee Schiller is a designer who inspired me to love appliqué back in about 2003. Her designs really opened my desire to quilt and appliqué! So great to see her! Jeff and Trisha were a HUGE help! I couldn't have done it without them! And a customer brought along one of her projects to show me how hers looked! She did a great job on the Punchneedle Mini Quilt, Primitive Pineapple Welcome don't you think?

My quilt Pennies In My Garden was in the Special Exhibit area. I really did not know this was so special until I saw all the museum quilts, Moda Designer Section, and many other beautiful quilts that were in this show. I am very grateful to have been a part of this! You can tell by the giddy look on my face that I was thrilled to meet Linda Collins and Mary Koval and see Lisa again for a few minutes during Quilt Market! On the day that photo was taken by the Quilt Festival sign, the weather in Houston was VERY humid, but no rain yet! We walked across the green space to get some lunch while setting up.

I'm all ready for the doors to open and love sharing my techniques and patterns to ladies from all over the world!

Here, I am attempting to teach some ladies from Brazil how to do Punchneedle. They didn't speak any English so I do hope they will be able to understand the video once they are ready to give it a try! (I've got to do something about looking over my reading glasses! What a terrible look! Haha!)

 

Jeff was such a big help I can't begin to thank him enough. He is so supportive of my passion for quilting and loves to hear comments of how excited people are about seeing my time saving technique for basting. He is so funny with excitement as he shares the stories with me. I had to leave the booth to take a break and I came back to home giving the Starch Basting technique a try! He's never done it before and he did a wonderful job! We even had some return customers come back the next day to buy the peoducts after seeing his own demo. I'm proud! The next photos showed us we were in the right spot for quilt shopping excitement. This woman was posted on guard of the batting while we were trying to get into the parking area! Too funny! The last day was a bit slow at Festival and I had the opportunity to snap a quick pic of these ladies who just couldn't walk another step and we're sharing their purchases and chatting for at least a few minutes! Too cute! And the last photo shows you a bit of the terrible rain during some of the days of the event. We luckily had good weather for unloading but as you all probably heard, there was lots of flooding in the area. The airports were closed, roads were flooded and tornado and flood warnings going off all night as well as during the show! We were thankful to be safe and felt for all of those who had to deal with water cleanup.

And one final bit of excitement...when I got home and had a chance to get into all the emails that needed attention a friend had sent a photo snapshot of a post she saw on Instagram about Festival... They even named me in the post! How exciting!

 

After all was said and done, it was a great week in Houston. I loved the experience that came with exhibiting at Quilt Market and loved meeting so many wonderful ladies who have a great passion for quilting at Quilt Festival. Now that life is a bit calmer (well it will be soon after I find a place for all my "stuff" that has landed in the living room) I am looking forward to making a new quilt using the 1/2" hexes I've made while doing my demo at quilt shows this year!

Thanks for visiting and I hope to be able to post more regularly once again!

Take care,

Missie

 

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