Quilter bazaar bizarre: The International Quilt Festival 2013

Jazz Dog

It's less than a week from Autumn, and here in Houston, where it's still above 90 degrees, all quilters can think about is Festival.  (Not "The Festival," but "Festival." Don't ask me why.)

Festival, with its convoys of friends riding $70-a-day scooters, all wearing matching hats, all trundling in single file past more clusters of friends wearing more matching hats.

Festival, filling the George Brown Convention Center's first floor from one end to the other, half its second floor, and who knows how much of the third? There'll be back-to-back classes in back-to-back classrooms up there.  

There will be some amazing quilts. There'll also be gadgets.  If it takes two days to get through the quilts, it takes two days to get through the quilter bazaar bizarre.

Every third quilter is fanatical enough to put down, say, $80 for the right quilting or embroidery hoop.  We all know that quilting is not for the thrifty.  Hasn't been for more than half a century.

The Pin Peddlers will be there for Festival to fill your heart's every need, if what your heart needs is lapel pins from previous Festivals. There are buttons by the each and templates by the ton.  Chatelaines.  Featherweights. Hand-dyed cottons and silks.  Brazilian embroidery thread.  Fabric paint.  Mini-irons.  Vintage kimonos.

Put a sweater on this. 

At last year's Quilt Market, before the Festival, there were patterns for quilted concealed-weapon handbags--just the thing for gun-totin' Texans.  Look for it in your local quilt shop.

Meanwhile, Pokey's Pet Postcards are stacking up.  For the second year, fabric postcards donated by quilters will be sold to benefit local pet shelters.

The postcard shown above is "Jazz Dog" by Grace Sim, a local quilter whose art quilt, "Fragments of my Childhood Memories [of growing up in Borneo]," is a finalist at the Festival this year.

In Houston, the first chill of the year is due around the end of October, "So the kids will have to wear sweaters over their costumes," a cheerful friend tells me.

As far as we're concerned, only one thing happens on October 31:  the Festival opens.