My experience at the Houston Quilt Festival 2025
October 2025 was my first year at the Houston Quilt Festival. Ever. I’m learning to allow myself to have fun and explore, and this was my experiment to see if I would like a big quilt show. The last big quilt show I went to was MQX (Machine Quilter’s Expo) in 2007 or 2008.
There are lots of restrictions on posting pictures online that are taken at the show. Mostly to avoid people from pirating things. So I won’t be sharing pictures of quilts, though believe me, I took plenty of inspiration pictures!
What I am going to share is my experience in the classes I took. I love exploring new techniques and hearing how other artists are using various techniques. So I picked classes that piqued my interest.
Modern Machine Quilting
This was a class on ruler work on the longarm. Cristina was an engaging teacher and gave use lots of examples of different fill type ruler work. It wasn’t so much a class on ruler work and different rulers as it was on how to explore and be creative with different fills on quilts, especially as suited for modern quilts. No learning feathers here. Just thinking practice and experiments on how to fill negative space with interesting quilting.
We started by designing an overall segmentation of our practice whole cloth quilt by drawing it out on paper and planning continuation of designs behind other designs. After playing on paper we marked our segments on our tops with blue marker. While we were at the longarm we improvised different designs to fill our marked out segments.
This is the piece I did:
There was one improvised section of mine that everyone who stopped by commented and Cristina actually took a picture of!
The practice coming up with ideas and then seeing how they stitched out was very helpful. I can see using this technique on future quilts, and was able to see what sorts of things I would want to mark and plan ahead for.
More importantly, it was really helpful to walk around to see what everyone else was doing. So many different styles and ideas!
The only thing not so good? Some technical issues that the show’s tech experts took forever to fix to display Cristina’s Power Point. Maybe because it was Monday? But there were some other classes that had issues, though not as extreme.
Watercolor for Quilters
with Swan Sheridan
This was a class on Derwent Intense blocks and pencils. Swan was an extremely fun teacher.
The class focused mostly on techniques that, surprise surprise, mimicked water color techniques. After taking the class I’m not so sure that I want to use Intense for watercolor effects, BUT I definitely learned a lot about how Inktense works, and can see avenues forward to using is for different types of techniques – because Swan taught some of the whys behind her techniques so we could experiment in other ways.
These are my very vivid flowers.
I can see using Inktense pencils in the future, but with less of the watercolor effect.
The Great Notion Giveway
with Joe Vecchiarelli
This was billed as “learn about the newest notions for the quilting and fashion world combined”. I figured it would be good for me to see a few things since I generally avoid gadgets. I thought maybe there would be some things I could try out and potentially recommend to make things easier for beginner quilters.
There was one notion I saw that was new to me. A hot press ruler for ironing hems etc. (affiliate link) Not necessarily a quilting notion, but one I will be ordering and trying out myself.
The presenter obviously knew nothing about quilting (based on his incorrect use of several basic quilting terms), and concentrated on fashion sewing.
If you are primarily a fashion sewer, have been living under a rock, and love Dancing with the Star and Disney celebrity gossip, this class is for you.
What made me laugh the most was the notion I won in the raffle. A magnetic seam guide. The one thing I have a whole video about why you don’t need it to sew straight.
Smoky Mountains
with Cynthia England
This woman knows both how to teach and how to entertain.
This was a full day class learning her different method of paper piecing. I took it because I really dislike paper piecing, but like the different things you can do with it.
She has a good tutorial on her site, but seeing her demonstrate and then going back to my machine and trying it myself was really helpful. I am still up in the air as to how far I want to go down this path of paper piecing, but I did buy another one of her kits to do after I finish the project we started in class. From my experience so far, the kits are DEFINITELY worth it for the landscape patterns. I wouldn’t want to try to find the exact right fabrics for all the pieces.
Here’s my project in progress.
Cynthia did have a short demonstration of how to go about designing your own projects. I think after I do the two projects I’ll have a better feel of the process and can decide whether I like it enough to design my own. I do like traditional piecing 🙂
Serger Essentials
with Gail Yellen
I have a serger. I hardly ever use it – because I mostly quilt, but also because I’ve never really delved into understanding my serger and what it can do.
So I took a class.
It felt a little like a sales pitch for the Bernina serger that we were using for the class. It’s a good machine…
But what I wanted to learn was more about the anatomy of the serger machine and the serger stitches. I did learn some things about that, but some of that was just because the Bernina had some awesome diagrams of the stitches on the display.
And to be honest, I know I’m a bit of an aberration – I created a whole course on how your sewing machine works because I find that sort of stuff really interesting as well as useful.
I guess I was looking for more of a theory course, and most sewers would not be.
This class reminded me a little of the class I got when I got my Bernina 1030 many years ago. I was shown lots of cool things. In rapid succession. And never really applied them ever again.
Gail did provide a nice handout with the serger settings for the machine we used to do the techniques we did, but I have yet to get out my serger and see if I can duplicate them. I’m pretty sure I have her book down in my studio and I may just be pulling that out the next time I want to explore my serger.
Hand Beading for Quilters
with Catherine Redford
I’m sure I could figure out how to sew beads on things. But I wanted to hear from someone who had sewn beads on lots of different quilts and had failures as well as successes.
And that’s exactly what I got.
There’s not a lot to figuring out how to sew beads on. But the additional little commentary Catherine gave mixed in with the basic beading instructions and thread tips gave me confidence that I could actually sew beads that will stay put on my quilts.
She seemed to lose a lot of students over the course of the class. I don’t know if that was because it was Friday afternoon, people weren’t hearing the extra knowledge passed and just wanted to take off with the simple handout and supplies, or that her unique brand of humor (dry) didn’t keep them entertained enough? I know I had fun. It was relaxing and informative and amusing.
Was Houston worth it?
I invested in this experience. It counted as an indulgent vacation for me. Everyone’s view of ‘worth it’ will be different. But here are my happys and sads:
Sads:
I stayed at a hotel about a half mile from the conference center because it was a little cheaper. I wished I had stayed in one of the hotels attached to the conference center. Although I did enjoy the walk (most days – some were HOT) to the conference center, Houston is pretty deserted even during the day, and I did not feel comfortable wandering about after dark. Which means I spent my evenings holed up in my hotel room. I should have brought hubby! The hotel (Club Quarters) also did not have a fridge or microwave, so I spent more on food than I would have liked.
Everything I read online said you definitely needed 2 days to see the show. I saw all the quilts in 4-5 hours. Yes, I looked at each one carefully. Yes, they were mostly amazing. But then another 2-3 hours looking at the vendors (not so carefully) and I was done. So I ended up with an extra day. I went back and looked at a few quilts that I wanted to revist, and wandered around the vendor booths some more, but I would have rather been home already.
I went by myself. I am a huge introvert. I like being by myself. Even I got a little lonely.
Happys:
The park in front of the convention center was empty most of the days. I got lunch from Phoenicia Foods every day and sat in the park to eat. It was very pleasant.
Seeing the quilts in person was wonderful. Although you can look at pictures of a quilt as a whole and maybe see some pictures of details, seeing it in person means you get the complete picture – all the detail combined with the whole. You also have the opportunity to talk with some of creators of the award winning quilts and ask them detailed questions!
Talking to the other quilters in the classes was wonderful. There’s nothing like a group of quilters 🙂
