In the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow. It’s one of my favorite holidays. This year, I’m cooking for a group of 14, including much of my extended family plus others. I always like to try out a new dish or two, but I learned my lesson about making too many changes to old favorites. Don’t we all have a treasured family recipe that we must have each year? In our family it’s the sausage and apple stuffing that my great-grandmother made.

As I look forward to the holiday, I like to reflect on the many blessings I have in this life: my family, friends and colleagues, my work. Here’s one of my favorite quotes on gratitude from physician Christiane Northrup: 

“Feeling grateful or appreciative of someone or something in your life actually attracts more of the things that you appreciate and value into your life.”
 
For me, it’s a real joy to be able to work in our industry, and I thank all of you for helping to make that happen.

I mentioned some about my trip to International Quilt Market and Festival a couple of weeks ago. At Market, fabric colors still seemed to be clear and bright, though I did notice some browns creeping back in. Lots of large designer prints, a la Amy Butler; lots of young new designers, including Jay McCarroll, Project Runways’s 2005 winner, now designing for FreeSpirit Fabrics. Also fans of Robin Pandolph will be thrilled that she is now designing for RJR. The other thing that struck me was food: lots of jelly roll, turnover and layer cake fabrics, books, patterns. Nice to have a non-caloric choice!

One of the niftiest new products I saw was Clearly Perfect Angles from New Leaf Stitches. This vinyl template sticks to your sewing machine table via static cling and lets you sew 45 degree angles. It also has 1/4 and 5/8 inch seam guides. These static-cling products remind me of the Colorforms I had as a child. My favorite was the repositionable fashion model. I remember drawing around the model and then creating dress designs on paper.

Quilts Inc. has released the following attendance figures for Market: 3,321 attendees and 551 exhibitors taking 1,144 booths.

The quilt show featured a number of special exhibits, most notable the more than 30 quilts in the “The DAR Museum Collection: Quilts From a Young Country.” These quilts have never traveled outside the Society’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. I feel fortunate that I live in the DC area and have seen quilts in the DAR collection.

As for attendance, final figures from Quilts Inc. show that total attendance was 52,542, down 1,704 from last year’s recording-breaking numbers. Considering the economy and Hurricane Ike, the drop in attendance was surprisingly moderate, said Karey Bresenhan, president of Festival’s producer Quilts Inc.
I’ll share more of my thoughts and other products in the upcoming issues of The Professional Quilter. If your subscription expired with the Fall issue, be sure to renew shortly.

Join us in the PQ Café on December 16 when I talk to Linda Taylor about starting a longarm business. Linda is well known in longarm circles for her quilting skills and her teaching. She has made more than 4,000 personal quilts and has been involved in the creation of more than 16,000. She began teaching longarm quilting more than 15 years ago. She has appeared on numerous quilting and sewing television shows; hosts her own show, Linda’s Longarm Quilting; and has written/produced numerous books/DVDs for the longarm industry.

The teleclass is scheduled for Dec. 16 at 8 pm, Eastern Standard Time. Here is a link to the details. Hope to see you then. And, if you have questions you want me to be sure to ask Linda, just drop me an email and I’ll try to fit them in.

The “Lost Quilt Masterpieces”
Barbara Brackman
Kansas City Star Quilts; $14.95

Isn’t choosing a new calendar for the new year fun? I always pick up the AQS Quilt Engagement Calendar to use as the travel log in my car. But I like to find one to hang in the kitchen. Once I found The “Lost Quilt Masterpieces,” the choice was easy.

Subtitled A Silly Calendar for 2009-2010,  this calendar showcases Barbara Brackman’s clever sense of humor. Each month features an undiscovered masterpiece, including “Long Arm Quilting at the Folies-Bergére” by Edouard Manet, “Double Wedding Ring” by Jan Van Eyck and “A Sunday Afternoon on the Old Quilts” by Georges Seurat. Each month’s calendar page does give homage to the actual painting. This calendar will amuse me each month, and I’m looking forward to using it.

And if you are like me, you’ll need an engagement calendar, too. The Quilt Art 2009 Engagement Calendar from AQS lives in my car where I use it to track my mileage. It’s great for this purpose and I can be inspired by prize winning quilts at all the traffic lights. Here’s a link to Amazon to this calendar.

I don’t know about you, but as we get into November I start to feel bogged down with lots of business activity (maybe it’s the overflow/aftermath from Houston!) and then the holidays are on us. It’s sometimes hard to keep balance in my life. This summer I talked with a new friend, Laura Howard West, on how I manage to keep balance in my life and live my priorities. Laura owns a business called Joyful Entrepreneur. For me it’s all about scheduling what I say is important, whether that is editing the magazine, working on a new product, volunteering at my church, taking a yoga class or having an afternoon out with my husband, and then living up to that commitment. That’s not to say I don’t occasionally reschedule, but I try not to. Once the activity is written down, I know it’s something of value to me and I make my best effort to live the values. I think for many women, myself included, it’s easy not to set time for self-care. This is my way of doing that.

If you’re interested in listening to our podcast, here’s a link to Laura’s site. Just click on the Café Entrepreneur link and look for podcast #14.

I’d love to hear how you balance your life!

Quilt Festival is always so inspiring to me. I’m floored every year by the quality and creativity of today’s quilters. I always return with my creative juices flowing. Just wish that came with unlimited time!

Tuesday evening before the show opened was the IQA Winner Circle’s Celebration. Best of Show, sponsored by HandiQuilter, went to Sharon Schamber for her “Spirit of Mother Earth.” Here are some details:

I particularly liked Trellis of Red Flowers by Deborah Kemball, the quilt that won the Founders Award, sponsored by International Quilt Festival. Here’s a full shot and a detail:

One of the newer awards is the Future of Quilting Award, sponsored by C&T Publishing. It went to Gina Perkes for Silken Defiance. Here’s a full shot of the quilt:

I always love Quilt Festival, not just for the outstanding quilts, but for the energy of other quilters and for the chance to catch up with quilters I haven’t seen for a year and to make new friends. If you’ve never been to the show in Houston, the scale is hard to appreciate. It takes up all five halls of the convention center.

Here are some overhead shots:

Thursday was the final premiere of the Bernina Fashion Show. Here are the two winning garments. The one on the left is the viewers choice, High Tea at the Broadmoor by Jenny Raymond, and the one on the right is the creme de la creme, Midnight Waltz by Ludmila Aristova:

Here is a shot of me with Alex Anderson, who received the Silver Star Award on Saturday, Ricky Tims and Eleanor Burns. Alex’s and Ricky’s booth was close to mine, so I saw them in passing a lot:

I also took a turn in the Priority Alzheimer’s Booth on Saturday. I don’t know the final numbers, but I do know they raised more than last year and went home with less than 100 of the 1000 quilts they brought.

Susan Ennis is the artist who created the second quilt I had in my booth. It’s titled Oasis.

And, finally, here’s a shot of Karen Bresenhan, the force behind Quilts Inc.