International Quilt Festival 2015 edition, Day One

I’m here!

I have wi-fi that is working well and a few minutes before I need to be anywhere so let’s see what I’ve been up to so far…

The view from the sky bridge is in Houston… interesting! Lots of construction this year. The tall building is the new Marriott going up across the Green. It will be open in time for next year’s festivities, complete with lazy river built around an island in the shape of the state of Texas!
I registered in the education office and received my name badge… and faculty ribbon (yes, really?!)
And a magnificent goody bag. This really is a lot of stuff. I had a meeting at 4.30 and then headed to the Winner’s Circle celebration where we would find out who had won what. The lighting was seriously funky but I found my seat… on the front row.
One of the fun “secret” things I did this summer was spend two days as a juror for the World Of Beauty show. It was intense as we whittled the original entries down to around 350 finalists who have their quilts on display this week. Now the cat was out of the bag and I got a front row view of the evening’s proceedings!

Of course I had to say hello to some of my fellow front row sitters. This is Gillian Shearer from Australia. At this point she knew she had one won one of the “big” prizes but she didn’t know what. Her husband was with her, pleased a punch to be celebrating with his wife.
A few rows back Laura Wasilowski and Robbi Joy Ecklow were looking happy to be there!The inimitable Stevii Graves emceed the proceedings. We were told Libby Lehman was in the room! She got a standing ovation as everyone celebrated her remarkable recovery with her.

Then we moved on the awards. Each category is sponsored and the sponsor delivered the prizes. Sachiko Chiba from Japan actually won two awards in the Hand quilting category.What I really liked watching was the Japanese contingent taking pictures of each other. They needed to. They were a long way from home.Eileen Daniels was sitting next to me. She knew she had a prize in her category but she didn’t know which one until the second place winner was announced… then she knew she’d placed first. I was nearly as excited as her!
And Gillian? She won the World of Beauty Award for her first ever show entry!  Such a beautiful quilt. I’m sure we will be seeing more of it.

The last award of the night was Best in Show and who better to be the recipient of the big check than Janet Stone? All the first place quilts and major award winners were in the room for us to get up close and personal with so we did…Here’s Eileen next to her quilt. The appliqué was all wool on a cotton background with all the fun stitches I love. Once I saw it I remembered admiring it in the jurying process, a truly worthy winner!
Time for a quick bite to eat with friends and then off to bed. After all that excitement I slept well. Today’s a new day! The show opens this evening but I’ve a few things to accomplish before then…