Houston 2006-3

Blue skies and a slightly cooler day greeted us as we drove into Houston.
We found our hotel and checked in by 1130, the room was going to be ready
when we returned.



We decided to check La Galleria, the big Houston mall just around the block.
It is huge with many arms and lots of shops. We had a nice lunch at the
café in Nordstrom's and then returned to the hotel. Only problem is it took
us about 30 minutes to go 4 blocks due to a janitor's demonstration a block
and a half from our hotel. There were 3 helicopters circling the action.



I contacted my friend Helen, who also flew down from New Westminster and
arranged to meet up with her at the festival the next day.



Friday we had blue skies and found the George R. Brown convention centre, we
went upstairs to find the RCTQ group only to find out that the space was
being used for something else. Back downstairs and into the food fair,
thought we wouldn't find anyone but did find Helen. We went to Starbuck's
and shared travel stories and spoke with two ladies from Houston and one
from Nebraska.



We wandered through some of the many quilt shows, and took pictures, then
went to Quilting Arts Magazine booth and got some interesting embellishment
threads. Got a couple of grab bags of thread from YLI and saw the leaf
quilt from Fibreworks in Billings. It was featured in the Quilt Sampler
magazine and they allowed me to take a few photos of it.



I walked by Quilts by the Bay booth and saw Freddie Moran signing books she
co-authored with Gwen Marston. She kindly autographed a book for me. She
recognized my Hoochy Mama badge from Mary Lou Weidman and we had a lovely
chat.



Went to the food fair a couple of times looking for RCTQer's with no luck.
Sat and chatted with some ladies and a gentleman from Quiltchat.com. They
seem to be an interesting group.



From Sulky I picked up a few spools of their Blendables and a sampler pack
of their stabilizers.



We got the car and headed back to the hotel, just around the corner was Yia
Yia Mary's Greek restaurant. Had a nice meal there and headed back to the
room.



More blue skies as we drove off to the Convention centre. We went to the
food fair and saw the Quiltchat.com people but no one from RTCQ.



We went and walked a few aisles of the shops and went back to the food fair
and saw a guy chatting with the Quiltchat.com people.he was holding a
shopping bag with RTCQ on it! It was Butterfly's son Joshua.



We found Butterfly and got a table at the end of the food fair and put a
chair up on the table with the RTCQ sign on it. We tried calling Sandy
Foster's cell phone but it went to message. A bit later Tricia and Michael
showed up. They live in Texas City, he works for Dow Chemicals, and we had
a great time chatting and then decided to check out some of the shops. We
lost tract of them in the crowd and carried on without seeing them again.



In the shops I met up with Cathy Miller the singing quilter from B.C. and
her husband. Had a nice chat with them. Then we saw Nancy Lee Chong from
Seattle and admired her lovely appliqué work. I hope we can get her up to
Vancouver to teach a class. Freddie Moran was still signing books and she
kindly posed for a picture for me.



Went through the rest of the quilt show and took a lot of pictures. Some
incredible works of art were in the show. Some you were not allowed to
photograph.



Back to the hotel and time to pack up. Heading off to Galveston in the
morning.

--
Sandi in New Westminster B.C.
Queen of the Travelogues
www.shh.apparitiondesigns.com