Houston Quilt Festival - What a weekend!

I actually made it to the Houston Quilt Festival this year, my first time!  It was fantastic awesome fabulous!  I made the decision to go last Tuesday afternoon after getting a bit of feedback from some posts on PR and the idea was given to me to try Priceline.com for a hotel room.  I didn't even look to see if any of the Host Hotels still had rooms, so I gave Priceline a try.  First I put in $60 and it came back and said to try $75 for a 4 star or better hotel.  So I gave it a try and low and behold it came back at $75 at the Houston Hyatt Downtown just 11 blocks from the convention center where the Festival was being held.  So, I got up at 4 am Saturday morning and headed out to Houston.  I arrived about 9:15 into traffic due to road construction right downtown at my exit to the Hyatt.  I made my way to the Hyatt Valet parking and the valet suggested I try to check in.  As luck would have it, they let me check in!!  I put my stuff in my room and then headed to the convention center and the weather was perfect for an 11 block walk!  I met up with my neighbor and her sister and we proceeded to have a day of SHOPPING!!  Here is a picture of the loot I purchased. I know I said I wasn't becoming a quilter....but I think I might be....it is just so much fun.

I'll describe...Bottom left is a pair of curved snips to cut those jump stitches in my machine embroidery designs, a pair of reverse tweezers- for changing those needles, a quilt pattern to make the with the fabric in the upper left, a slip pad for machine quilting, a tote bag pattern and the fabric that I will use that is folded in the star package and a straight stitch plate for my sewing machine.  In the next row is a freebie of a tissue holder pattern with the fabric and then a few pins that were freebies and the luggage tag from Babylock that was a freebie along with the tote bag.  Also here is the ergonomic rotoray cutter and some nonslip pads for rulers.  I also bought the ruler that has a lip for this rotary cutter to fit on but they were sold out so it is being shipped.  To the upper right are 3 different sized rulers from Quilt In A Day by Eleanor Burns and her cute shopping bag.  I even got to meet her in person!  Then there is the red halo for machine quilting and the last 2 items shown are 2 different patterns for quilt in the hoop for the embroidery machine.  My neighbor and I split this purchase - it was buy 2 get 1 free so we split the cost and will share them.  She took the other one to her house.  And the biggest and most exciting purchase is the ......

Babylock Imagine serger!!!  It has Jet Air Threading for the Upper and Lower loopers!  Wow is all I can say.  It is being shipped and I can't wait to get it.  That means that I can actually change threads when I am serging something.  I have had the same white thread in my other serger because it takes my 30 to 45 minutes to change the thread on the darn thing.  Anyway, we spent the entire day shopping at the vendors and then we all had dinner at a wonderful greek restaurant somewhere in Houston.  I'm sure I could never find it again!  Sunday morning I had a leisure breakfast at the hotel then went upstairs and packed and headed down to checkout around 10:00 am and then headed to the parking garage next to the convention center.  I parked then contacted my SIL and we met up and viewed the award winning quilts and most of the other entries.  Wonderful quilters out there!  I then left my SIL and moved back into the vendor floor where I visited the Floriani booth to talk with them about my software.  She spent a good 45 minutes with me and I feel much better about trying to digitize now.  I headed back out around 1:30 and made it home around 6:15 pm!  Whew!  What a weekend.

As you can tell, the Quilt Festival was a great success for shopping. 

This Saturday I'm taking my machine quilting class that was cancelled from a few months back.  A few of the items I purchased will be used in the class.

I'll post how the class went!