Houston Quilt Festival 2012

George Brown Convention Center

I've just returned from the 2012 Quilt Festival in Houston. It's my first trip in several years, and the sights were just as amazing as I remember. The George Brown Convention Center is about the length of five football fields, with five entrance halls--A, B, C, etc., to help visitors get some sense of where they are. The first floor is filled with vendors and quilt displays. In addition to the judged show--Quilts: A World of Beauty--there are about 35 other exhibits. The second and third floor contain registration, information booths, classrooms, lecture halls, coffeeshops, cafes, outdoor patios, and the list goes on and on.

 One of the most unusual exhibits this year was one of photographs of recognizable famous sites with quilts superimposed onto the buildings!

I love pictures of people looking at quilts, and when someone offered to move out of the way for my photograph, I encouraged them to continue to look!


Quilts, Inc. will have picture galleries of winners; also, many bloggers have posted pictures online, such as Trish Casey-Green's excellent ones: http://smu.gs/QmbuvW. 

SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) had two beautiful exhibits--A Seasonal Palette and A Sense of Scale. These were accompanied by printed catalogs of all the pieces, and the Seasonal Palette included a journal/workbook by each artist describing the process used. These workbooks were on a table in the middle of the exhibit and available for handling and reading at leisure. The curators conducted tours of both exhibits, with many of the artists available to describe their works further.  Very inspiring!

It was much easier to see the quilt show when we were younger and healthier, but we continue to do what it takes to be there!