Houston 2013

A highlight of the year for me is attending the International Quilt Festival in Houston. It is a wonderful opportunity to see a large number of quilts from around the world.  It also has a very large number of vendors with all the latest gadgets, fabrics and fun stuff.

 Here is a look at some of the vendors.

 An early stop is to this vendor to get an XL tote bag.

A new feature this year was the miniature golf to win spools of thread. Alas, my skills were pretty rusty and I did not get far on this course.

 Craftsy sponsored "Open Studios". There were 4 stations that each had demonstrations for 2 hour blocks. I really enjoyed visiting the ones featuring mixed media artists.

 The Open Studios was conveniently located near the food court.

 So many fun things on display.

And lots of fun outfits by attendees.

Paper Cloth with Fiber Junkies

Oh what fun you can have with some cloth and a bunch of paper and tissue scraps with glue to hold it all together! Gen was our guide with her previous experience in making paper cloth that we all admired.

 This is some of the papers we had collected.

 This is my tray with a piece of cloth on it, ready to start. Note the jar and glue. We thinned out the glue and used a sponge brush to apply it to the cloth.

 These are some papers I had cut and torn. I liked the maps and some wrapping paper. After I had laid some paper out, I couldn't wait to get started.

 So I spread the thin glue on the cloth and then added the papers with more glue.

 This is what it looked like after I added strips of tissue paper. Then I painted a really pretty blue wash that Gen brought over the white areas.

That was so much fun that I immediately did another paper cloth. The colors are pretty similar. I really liked the green and aqua tissue paper. More of that same blue paint was added. Do you see the red swirls? That was a tissue paper. I liked the movement of it and added it liberally to my cloth.

 This pink one was made by another fiber junkie, very pretty. Wish I took notes on who made what.

 I like this one with the yellow, made by Gen. You can see hints of her blue paint wash on the light areas.

 After lunch, some of us were inspired to have fun with paper napkins and tissue paper directly on the cloth. So there wasn't any magazine or other paper.  I really liked the striped and plaid napkins and threw in the polka dots and a leafy napkin. Then that same blue paint was added at the end.

Val had a pretty paper napkin at lunch that I really liked. It is the aqua swirl that you see above. I tore it and distributed around the cloth with a floral napkin and map pieces.

Knoxville's Market Scene

There were a lot of food trucks at the Knoxville market.

What fun names they have.

The retro look was popular.

This was a particularly busy truck.

Here is a close-up.

Not too sure about what is painted on this truck.

The market had a lot of cafes also. This one had really bright orange chairs for all the UT fans.

There were dozens of vendors with fresh produce. It all looked wonderful.

So did the plants.

There were two sets of pumpkins, sorted by size.

Just love these huge baskets of flowers.

We bought some of the elongated radishes. Wish I could remember what they are called. Great in sandwiches.

These are mushrooms.

Such pretty colors.

These melons have character.

More mushrooms. The ones above are growing out of the plastic bags.

These are dried.

I didn't know they could grow out of bags, hanging around...

I found all the mushrooms fascinating.

Knoxville and Fiber

We were in Knoxville on a recent Saturday and went to the Market downtown. It was a really busy, fun place to be. I particularly enjoyed the booth where a woman was knitting socks, on a machine! I haven't done any knitting since I was in college, and not much then. But I have been most interested in the knitting of my fiends, particularly hand knitted socks.

It is hard to see the machine well, but you can see the green and orange skeins of wool. They go up through the thread stand that hangs over the knitting device.

The knitter is attached to a painted stool. There is a hand crank to turn the yarn around the inside of the round device.  See the weight hanging below? It holds the sock in place as it is knitted.

In this picture you can see the inside of the round device where all the knitting action is.

Look at these beautiful wool yarns. A few are commercially available, the rest are hand dyed by the knitter.

These are her socks for sale. Aren't they great?!

This is another booth with hand dyed scarves and fabrics sewn into garments.