On Thursday I participated in the Mixed Media Miscellany which was pretty interesting.
Two hours of live continuous demo to 240 people circulating in one of the convention center ballrooms, set up with tables for about 20 artists all demonstrating different mixed media techniques.
Sorry I don't have any photos, I totally forgot to take any, it was pretty intense to be that "on" for two hours. It's a good thing the event wasn't more than two hours because I don't think my voice would have held out much longer.
After I finished, I walked through the vendor hall, which always leads to fun things, like seeing a booth dedicated to sock monkeys or another to gorgeous vintage buttons,
a visit with my daughter
Nina working in the Misyfuse booth and running into friends,
Leslie Jenisen and Jamie
as well as seeing my Christmas tree skirt hanging in the Quilting Arts booth.
Then a bunch of us invaded
Jane LaFazio's MIU workshop, because we had to give her a hug hello on her first day in Houston. She was clearly overwhelmed by all the emotion.
Look at all the lovely wool roving and floss that Jane had her students stitching. Makes you wish you were in there stitching and embellishing too.
By the way all her wool was from
Outback Fibers, who had a booth at festival for the first time. I buy all my roving from them. While visiting their booth I had to indulge in some wool prefelts and gorgeous multicolored roving. I will post a pic when I get around to unpacking my supplies from the trip.
In the evening, eight of us crammed into a taxi mini van and went to a
Spoonflower meetup being held at a coffee shop downtown, to get the latest info about making your own custom printed yardage.
Next to the coffee shop there was a lobby of a grand old hotel with a huge limestone lobby. There was some pretty majestic furniture in it, so Leslie sat and practiced her royal wave.
The funny thing about this meet up was the only one who had printed fabric samples was Frances, who had a bag full of yardage she has had printed with Spoonflower. We did get a nice little swatch book of the new fabrics you can have your imagery printed on though.
Frances and Robbi look like they are having a pretty serious discussion with the Spoonflower girls, who probably didn't know quite what to make of us wild older women of fiber, lol,
who before too long were reverting to our juvenile ways, snapping silly pictures of each other.
We all squeezed back into a cab for the ride back to the Hilton. Nina and I, in the back row of seats in the taxi van and behind us on the floor in the trunk space was Leslie!
No one can say we don't know how to have fun together!
