QuiltCon - food, t-shirts and more quilts

I tired to stick as much as I could to my eating routine, but you know how hard that is when you travel. Breakfast and lunch was fruit and then Glen and I would find someplace yummy for dinner. The first day on the way back from Whole Foods was a place on 6th street. I have a wonderful black bean burger and yes a few fries.

The next night we stopped at Stubbs' for bar-b-que. My brother recommended the place as he has been there several times when he worked the South by Southwest Festivals. I had brisket, sweet potato fries (fries seem to come with everything!) and a small side of mac and cheese. I didn't eat the bread.

Glen has sausage, fried okra, and spinach.

The next night we went to a Tex-Mex restaurant call Pelons. I had a chicken burrito, black beans, rice and a margarita. The burrito was so big I could only eat half of it which was breakfast the next day. It was a beautiful evening and we sat outside as we ate our dinner.

Of course there were warm chips and salsa!

The next night we were just walking around and found a place that had freshly made burgers. It was an interesting place as they just opened their awning to the street and there was their grille and kitchen. You stood in line on the sidewalk. I forgot to take a picture, but their burgers were delicious!

Again, no pictures, but the last night was PF Changs where I have never eaten before. I has shrimp low mein - very tasty! I had ordered egg rolls and ate those for lunch and breakfast the next day.

There were a huge number of places to eat within walking distance and the last place we found, Easy Tiger, was right around the corner from the hotel. The place was a combo bakery and beer garden. Glen got a sandwich and I got an order of baguette and butter. Their bread was out of this world! The crust was crispy, lots of holes in the bread, and the butter was sweet and salty. I have a new recipe for making a baguette so I think I will have to give it a try this weekend. All I can think about is that bread!

I received a t-shirt in the mail yesterday from a reader in Wisconsin - Red Hot Chili Peppers! A very cool shirt that will fit in with the others I have collected so far. I also dug thru my drawers and found a Bon Jovi shirt from the Bounce tour. That is when Jon, Richie, Tico, and David received a quilt from me. Hugh's came a couple of years later - long story. So here is what my design wall looks like now. I will be going by a Goodwill store tomorrow so I will stop and look to see if I can find any t-shirts.

This quilt I liked. It was a group quilt - nicely made and an interesting design.

I like this small piece. Well made and was interesting to look at.

This is another one I had seen before, but I really liked it. She really took an old design to a different place.

I had seen this quilt before on-line. It is kind of interesting. The woman who made it did not quilt it. The quilting could have been better. The back was also pieced.

This piece was nicely made, but the sad pantograph quilting took away from the piece. There were several quilts in the exhibit that had the same pantograph quilting and it did nothing for the quilts.

One of these were labeled an original design. Changing the colors of the fabric isn't enough to make a piece original.

Knock-offs

How were these enough to put in a show?

Here are pictures of small pieces.

I still have a few more to show and I didn't take pictures of all the quilts! After looking at a few other blogs there were quilts I missed. They layout of the exhibit was mazelike and it was easy to miss pieces and apparently I did!

QuiltCon - goodies and quilts that are not flat

Yes, there were some goodies to be had. They handed us a bag fill with stuff. Here is the bag with a sample of dream batting and a pressing sheet.

Two charm packs were in the bag

Here are fabrics I collected from the vendor booths over the four days. Some were giveaways and some you had to play a game

Thread

Post-it notes, measuring tape, and triangle ruler

Magazines and patterns

A plastic box that held a ruler, colored pencils, and a little book with gridded paper for designing your modern quilts

Screen cleaning pads, a sample of laundry soap and a Moda tea towel I won in a corn hole game.

I was very surprised at how many of the quilts shown did not hang straight. I mean they were not just a little wavy, but very wavy. I can see how some quilts got in the show due to a good photo that disguised this. Some of these quilts in my lousy photos look better here than they did in person. Then again were they designed to hang this way? I doubt it. This was very distracting. There were plenty of quilts that did not hang wavy so it was not due to the hanging system used. Overall I found the design of most of the pieces very simple and not stimulating. A few of these quilts were not quilted by the person that pieced the quilt top and some of the quilts had been made from a published pattern. Most quilts I saw had folded corners for the binding. I also saw applique that was simply pieces zig zagged at the edge. The level of detail and workmanship was not consistent thru the exhibit.

Execution was good; it just hung wavy.

This gray and off white piece looked worse in person than it does in this photo. I like the overall design and it was a big quilt. It is too bad the execution wasn't better.

Now see the two toned gray quilt with the blue and pink goose tracks? That quilt was not accepted in the show, but it hanged straight and was quilted beautifully. It was made by Quilt Paradigm. I am glad I got to see it in person.

Tomorrow I will have pics of more quilts and the food we had while in Austin.