And mother nature has a wicked sense of humor….more on that in a minute…

Keeping Watch Over Carlson Ranch by David Taylor of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Yes, this photo is a tease of more to come, and I'm posting it especially for my friend Jacquie (the quiltmuse whose poem on thread graces the Dedication page of my book) who loves owls.

Yes, I am home from Houston, happy, content, hugged, doggie-slurped-and-wiggled, kitty-go-bumped, tired, and did I say happy?   The trip to Quilt Market and Festival went wonderfully well.  As expected it was both exhilarating and exhausting, but of course re-entry requires you to unpack, do laundry, pay bills, walk the dog, feed the kids, crash on the sofa with hubby and all those good things.

The Forest of Trees (from quilters in Germany) was one of the coolest exhibits I've seen at Festival. It made people smile... more on this in another blogpost.

To GET to those good things, I had to get home. Remember Mother Nature?  She didn’t just rain on my parade, she SNOWED on it.  On October 18th for heaven’s sake!

My suitcase weighed 66 pounds (16 over the limit) when I got to the airport in Houston, so I moved stuff to my carry on bags (thereby making them stuffed to beyond bearing).  That meant my two carry-ons were 33 and 34 pounds each.  The top bag was the heavier, with laptop, video cam and projector and a thousand cables for classes… I have the new bag that zips open so you don’t have to take out the laptop, but with all the cables etc. the TSA that did secondary review on the way down told me it would be faster if I unpacked the projector and cables ahead of time…they were right but what a fuss.

SO…. I had three flights:  Houston to LaGuardia in New York City, NYC to Boston, then the final hop on the 8-seater plane from Boston to Rockland, Maine, a one-hour flight.  Thanks to being in old airports in NYC and Boston, I had to go through security THREE TIMES because of airline/terminal changes.  UGH.  And in NYC the guy said the carry-on was too big, wouldn’t let me through.  I zipped the overstuffed daypack off the suitcase and strapped it to the computer bag, and he let me through.  I thanked him for being flexible and told him good karma would come to him.

When I got to Boston, weather was bad and had been all day.  Cape Air is a wonderful little regional airline (very nice, helpful, generous compared to the big airlines), but the planes are small.  And there were high winds.  Winds too high for the little planes.  All flights to Nantucket and Martha’s Vinyard had been stalled all day.  I waited 3 hours for my flight time to arrive.  As the time approached my flight went from on time, to delayed, to (an hour after scheduled lift-off) cancelled.  Fortunately, I was already setting up alternatives, and had called the Knox County (local to home) airport to get the name of the car rental company there so I could rent a car and drive home, then drop it off near where MY car was parked—Knox County Airport told me 15 minutes before Boston did that the flight was cancelled.

So after getting up at 3:45 a.m. (I woke early….usually sleep fitfully before a travel day), to the airport in Houston by 5:15 a.m., at 7:15 p.m. I was at the Budget rental counter getting a car to drive home 190 miles (4 1/2 to 5 hours due to the second half not being the interstate) in snow, sleet, rain, dark, cold and tired.   BLEAH.   But as I moved north the nastiest of the weather abated and turned to rain, and at 10 pm NPR had on a Canadian Broadcasting concert the first hour of which was Arlo Guthrie!  LOVED it…was singing away in the dark in my tinny little compact!  Got home at 12:15.  Paul had stayed up waiting (and worrying I think, the weather really was nasty) and the dog almost wiggled off his hind-quarters!  Kissed the boys (who were asleep), and we dropped into near instant sleep.

In a few days I’ll start sharing all the good stuff from Houston, with LOTS of pictures!

WOOOOOHOOOO!!!!!!

Last night was the awards ceremony, and I won a SECOND PLACE for Fields of Gold… I am simply STUNNED and ELATED, and I’m shouting and happy dancing a whole lot louder than my typing indicates…<GRIN>!!!!!!!!!    Here’s a quick photo or two or three…then gotta run teach a class.  It is 6:55 a.m. and I’m in the Hilton lobby en route from room to Convention center, but there is free WiFi here….

After the ceremony, I went to thank Pokey Bolton, whose company Quilting Arts sponsored the prize:

Here’s my table right now, with laptop, Festival badge and ribbons:

And a close-up:

OK….gotta run and teach, but I think you can see how happy I am… DREAMS COME TRUE! (And I get to go home on Sunday to hubby and kids….more dreams come true!)

Hi all!   I am having a ball in Houston at Quilt Market and (soon) Festival!   I taught my first class today (and forgot to take picture, tho the camera was there!).  I will have to remember tomorrow!   It went well, I sold ALL (ten each) of the piping tools I took, and a number of copies of my book…YEAH!   I may be able to afford to pay AQS for the first  50 copies I ordered to sell…hooray!

I probably won’t be able to blog much, but promise to post something as soon as I know what I won…yes, I won a prize here in HOUSTON!!! ME???????   I am delirious, and find out tomorrow night.  It will be either a Judges’ Choice, 3rd, 2nd or first…. given the other quilts in the category, I’m guessing Judges or 3rd…. there are some amazing quilts, and I can’t figure out how I got so lucky as to get one of the ribbons…

It’s now late, and I need to wash hair (wanna look good tomorrow!), so have to leave the WiFi in the lobby and head upstairs to the NoWiFi room!  (At the Hilton no less!)

THANKS for surfing in!  I PROMISE I’ll return to more regular/ slightly less infrequent blogging soon….. once I’m home from Houston, I have a deadline for a machine article,  then I’ll upload the annotated bibliography “From Sarah’s Bookshelf” that I promised in the Res ources section of my book…

Toodles for now, Sarah

There is a poster with a picture of Michael Jordan that bears this quote:

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career.

I’ve lost almost 300 games.

Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed.

I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

– Michael Jordan

HOORAY!   Like the rest of us who keep trying, we learn, sometimes we make the basket (or the art that works) but sometimes we don’t.  And even when we don’t succeed, we can learn and do better next time……

Hi all!   In just one week (GASP, Shriek!) I leave for Houston to help launch my book AND teach AND have a ball at Festival.  My Wednesday class on thread is (hoooray and thanks to those who signed up) FULL!  But I still have spaces in my other classes.  I’ll blog about each of them separately in hopes that a more extensive description might encourage a few more folks to join the fun.
Chunk and Jigsaw Fusible Applique is really a fabric postcards class that sneaks in a few art quilting techniques such as stencilling with textile paint, rubbings with Shiva Painsticks, stamping, using Angelina, and creative edge finishes.  Also I’m debuting what will become my next pattern:  Little Brown Bird.  Students can use the bird on a postcard OR make a larger piece.  My LBB quilts (the wholecloth and the in-progress fused applique seen here) are about 16 x 20 inches:

LBB Fused 16x20, in progress

I’ll start the day with my technique that I call chunk and Jigsaw which uses up all those leftover bits to create a “stash” of pre-fused fabric.  Then when you want to dash off a quick thank you postcard to someone, it’s easy peasy…just pull out the pre-fused stash and start collaging!

LBB Postcard w/poptart edges

Here are some other samples of postcards I’ve done that may get you inspired to give it a try:

Hannah's Flower

Trees on Point

Kathy Daniels' birches card framed and Sarah's Mt. Fuji in a shadow box

Umbrella Abstracted, mounted onto batik on stretcher bars

Loons in Maine notebook cover

Hope you can make it to the class!  Just head to the second floor of the convention center to the education desk to sign up.  Cheers, Sarah