My Quilt Festival Weekend

 

For the last two years I wrote of my adventures at the Houston International Quilt Festival. But this year, due to Covid, it has been cancelled.  So many of the things we look forward to and enjoy doing have been cancelled. 

 

In the Spring here in Tyler we had our local quilt show cancelled.  It was always my little staycation in March.  It was a way to immerse myself with beautiful colors and quilts and people who speak the same language (you know piecing, appliqué, embellishment). This year I felt a bit lost that weekend.  All my activities gone. 

 

Well I recently decided that even if I couldn’t go to Houston for the Quilt show, I was going to have my own quilt festival. So for the first weekend in November I am planning some quilt activities of my own.

 

I am thinking of going to both local quilts shops and if nothing else wander around the wonderful fabrics they have.  I will try to find something to buy so I am supporting our local small business shops.  Shopping is a big activity at any quilts show,

 

I am hoping it will be cold so I can sit under one of my quilts or maybe many of them by switching them out every couple of hours.  I love old quilts so I am going to pull out a quilt history book to read or maybe browse through all the picture I took in Houston the past 2 years.

 

I am trying to decide whether to start a new quilt project or work on one in progress but some amount of stitching needs to occur that weekend. The big question is which project to decide on.  Or maybe I will watch a new technique on Youtube like I would with the free demos at the show.

 

I do know I plan to get a pizza that weekend.  When you think about it pizza is the perfect quilty food.  You have the crust on the bottom which is like the backing of the quilt.  The sauce on the top is like the background fabric of the front of the quilt and the toppings are like an appliqué design with the cheese holding everything together just as the quilting stitches do on a quilt.  Plus by getting a pizza delivered, I don’t have to cook and can spend more time looking, stitching and shopping quilts. 

 

So for one weekend I am going to immerse myself in quilts.  But you don’t make quilts, you say.  Well what other event or activity is being cancelled due to this pandemic?  What about Halloween?   Is trick or treating allowed in your community?  If not what are you going to do?

 

My paternal grandmother lived in a little apartment in the back of a small apartment building.  In the fall it would get dark very early and since the driveway was not well lit and you couldn’t see her porch light from the street, she did not get many trick or treaters except for my brothers and I.  Now I liked going to her house because she always made such a fuss of our costumes but also because she didn’t get many kids, she would buy the big candy bars not the little fun sizes to give out and we would get what was left over.

 

So what if you just took the kids to house where you knew the people (like grandma and grandpa) and give them a big size candy bar..  Or maybe decorate the back yard and have a Halloween treat hunt (like an Easter Egg hunt).  You could buy things you wouldn’t give for regular trick or treat, like big candy bars, or apples, cut out cookies, coloring books or some Halloween themed toys. 

 

There is no reason to just let the events and activities which are cancelled from Covid to slip by.  Create your own event.  No it will not be the same.  I won’t be traveling by bus to Houston with 40 other quilters but I will provide myself with a quilt filled weekend and probably have just as much fun.

 

©2020 Cheryl Fillion