The International Quilt Festival: The People

I spent a week at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX.

For anyone in the quilt world – a trip to IQF – we just call it “Houston” is something akin to a pilgrimage to the holy land of quilting. Yes. It IS that big of a deal. I’ll show you the main reason why – the quilts of course – in my next post, but for me – it’s all about the people.

The lovely, talented, energizing people! These are the students in my Creative Collage & Collaboration Class. I think this class is definitely my new favorite. (More on that later.)

There are always international student at IQF, but this is the first year I’ve had students from Turkey, Brazil, and Argentina. Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and more are always well represented.

One of the new owners (from France) of Artwork from the Art Box CSA found us!
How cool is that!?!?!?!?

Most attendees aren’t lucky enough to meet the cadre of dedicated and hardworking people that make the show happen. Judy Murrah and Kim DeCoste hire teachers and keep things running behind the scenes for the classes. They are truly miracle workers!

Friends from the Sketchbook Challenge blog found time to be together.
Jamie Fingal, Judy Coates Perez, Leslie Tucker Jenison
Sue Bleiweiss, Lyric Montgomery Kinard, Lesley Riley 

The oh-so-talented Bonnie McCaffery working on taped interviews with a few of the Dinner@8 Rituals artists and organizers: Susan Brubaker Knapp, Leslie and Jamie.

More Dinner@8 artists

Can I just say – last week was much more than a quilt show. It is really just the world’s largest slumber party. We didn’t sleep much but we truly enjoyed each other’s company.