International Quilt Show -- Houston

This picture is (l-r) J.D. McCain, Nancy McCain, me and Alex at the International Quilt Show in Houston, Texas. You can see one of the beautiful Congenital Heart Defect Awareness quilts behind us.

We had a wonderful time at the quilt show! J.D. and Nancy did a terrific job of setting up the quilts, information about congenital heart defects and they even had two sewing machines with a lot of material, an iron, cutting board, rotary cutters and everything else needed to make a block for a heart quilt. They gave lessons, so Alex and I made each made a quilt block. Here are some pictures of Alex making his quilt block.



Here is Alex picking out his material. Then J.D. told Alex how the sewing machine controls work. The third picture (above) is of J.D. demonstrating how Alex would need to use two hands to feed the material into the sewing machine.



J.D. shows Alex where to start sewing the first corner. Then Alex sews the opposite corner on. In the third picture you can see where both corners have been sewn on.



Now you can see J.D. ironing the seams, showing Alex where the big corner piece needs to be sewn on and then cutting the excess material.



J.D. then draws the top center part of the heart that will be blue and he pins the blue material in place. When he was done pinning the material, he showed Alex how it had to be sewn.




Here Alex is sewing one side of the blue material. The middle picture shows J.D. watching until Alex is finished (3rd picture).



Again J.D. irons, watches Alex finish the last seam and then removes the pins.



Once again J.D. works a little magic and TA DA! Alex's quilt block is complete. It's amazing what two guys can do when they put their heads (and hearts) together.

Not to be outdone, check out the pictures of my quilt block and Alex's below. Now our blocks will be part of the Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Quilt Project.



As if that were not exciting enough, we had a chance to meet some wonderful people. Alex met some other people who had been affected by hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Corrie Stassen, President of It's My Heart, came to provide helpful information to passersby. She seemed happy to meet Alex and her baby (Gavin) was precious. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of Alex and the baby, although he did hold him for a while. We also met Heather Vinson and Becky Suggs -- more It's My Heart officers. I wish we could have had more time to talk to these fine ladies.

The last person I met was a woman whose best friend's child had a heart transplant. She took one of my cards and agreed to give it to her best friend to see if her husband would contribute to The Heart of a Father. To my delight, tonight I received a phone call from Maureen and she is going to talk to her husband about writing for the book. I am very excited about that because I've been looking for a successful transplant story for the book and her son is rejection-free and will be 17 years old soon.

My father, Bob Daigneault, went to the Quilt Show on Saturday and he also met some wonderful people. Dad also made a quilt block, but he neglected to take a picture of it. Drats! He said it was great to talk to Nancy, J.D. and the many other people who stopped by and whose lives were affected by congenital heart defects. He also found a potential author for The Heart of a Father.

What a wonderful experience for my family and me! I hope that next year we will be able to go to Houston again for this incredible show. If so, I think Alex and I will get a hotel so we won't have to do so much driving in one day (8 hours of driving!) and so we can enjoy some of the beautiful exhibits. I also would like to visit more of the vendors. I bought a little something to help me with another quilt project. Working with J.D. and Nancy has given me the courage to want to do more quilting.

I hope all of you enjoyed the pictures. I think it took me longer to upload all the pictures to the blog than it took Alex to make the quilt block. I thought it would be fun to see a boy with HLHS making a quilt block with a grandfather of a child with HLHS for the CHD Quilt Project. I hope all of my visitors agree.

Sincerely,

Anna