Houston 2023

Carly Mul • May 26, 2023

The announcement of the Educational Faculty of the 2023 Houston International Quilt Festival has brought many new visitors to this website and I thought it would be informative to write a short blog about my intense Houston experience.


Houston is dear to my heart. There always have been two components: Market, where shops can buy their fabrics and Festival, where the general public can enjoy a super  quilt show. Market and Festival are two entirely different ways of dealing with fabrics and they each, in their own way, feed my interests. At Market I can think about color and design, meet the manufacturers, talk about fabric business, promotion and development. Looking for trends, what’s happening?  When I give lectures about colors and trends, The Houston Market is a big source of inspiration as so much of the industry is all together at the George Brown Convention Center.

Festival , which is being held right after Market, is for the end consumer of the fabrics. The people that actually buy the fabric from shops and use these fabrics for their creative needs. Festival displays  the absolute top of the quilting art and makes me admire every piece that was so honored to be accepted in the show.  It is an exciting place for any quilter and I have met so many amazing people from all over the world as I was selling my fabrics as the owner (and founder) of Webfabrics. The art of selling fabric, the presentation of fabrics, the displays are in a way my own creativity. And I love business, the process of setting up shop and the challenge of being the best I can be in those 4 days of Festival… love it! 

The first year, 2004, I had a very small booth in size 10” x 15”. I had no idea what to expect and I came with my mother as my helper and a small  trailer with fabrics (and my fabric boxes) to Festival. This small booth grew in the following years to 10” x 20”, 10” x 30” and my team of helpers was growing with local quilter Pam as the first one. As my mother grew older, I had to tell her that she couldn’t come with me any longer. The intensity of the show left me no room to take care of her in case something would happen to her…that was hard, but we both have  great memories of those first years together.

The year 2010 was a milestone. I left Virginia on a Monday in my large  Sprinter van and this van broke down just south of Harrisonburg, VA. I had to be towed with all my fabrics to a local garage and the friendly man who did this told me that if I was his wife, he wouldn’t let me drive all by myself to Houston.  I replied that I was very happily married indeed;) The garage  first told me I would be back on the road the next day, and then again the next day.  On Wednesday a part was not available…it would take 2 weeks to get it (I learned a very important lesson very quickly and sold the car as soon as I could). The only solution would be to rent a truck  and drive to Houston or I would miss the show. All the fabrics were cut… I couldn’t miss the show and I also had to rush to be in Texas by Saturday for my first Market appointments.  I walked to a Budget truck company and asked them if I could try to drive a 16” truck. As I stepped up high into this truck, I was paralyzed: no way I could drive such a big car all the way to Texas! I stepped out and said no. By then what? I felt I had no choice, stepped into the truck again and convinced myself that I could do it. Why would I not be able to do this?

My employee and friend Cathy knew some kids at Bridgewater college and these students were willing to move all my boxes in the pouring rain from the broken van into the truck.  For $25.00 each and a slice of pizza. On my way! I drove slowly, getting used to my high chair and becoming familiar with this very basic dashboard. By the time I reached Houston, the truck and I had become buddies and driving was no longer an issue. “Show" Nancy (Nancy only helped at the show and there was also a “shop” Nancy in those days) was waiting for me in Houston and when I opened the back of the truck, she said the historic words: "Oh now we have more room for fabrics next year. We can do a 10” x 40” booth!”

In 2011 the booth was 10” x 40” indeed and ideas were forming how to make it even bigger. To make a long story short: starting in 2012, Webfabrics was having a big island booth of 20” x 30”, the largest fabric display of Festival, where people could walk outside and inside the display, seeing full lines of the top latest collections. My team had grown to 5 people, with Pam still helping. Every year I drove my big truck to Texas, always waving at the place my van had broken down. But I also shipped 2 extra containers with fabrics to Houston that a local moving company brought into the convention center as even the big truck couldn’t hold enough fabric for the eager Houston crowd.  It was always such a relief to see those containers showing up! It was a well oiled operation with so many fantastic memories for everyone on the team. We worked hard, we laughed hard and after the show was over, everyone was tired for days. I drove my almost empty truck back to Virginia and the quietness in the truck was so welcome  after all the sounds of Houston. In Houston you think fabric is all that matters. When you leave Houston behind, you realize you have a family, non-fabric friends… it’s like coming out of a bubble.


Covid came and a year ago Webfabrics was sold to give me more time for family, travel and quilting. My days of selling fabrics are over and the new Webfabrics has a new style, that is no longer mine.  The new owners, Beverly and Sydney,  have their own taste, their own way of doing business and that is how it should be.
lulu

Collage quilting started around 2013 to explode. Laura Heine, she too will be in Houston teaching (!), came out with her first patterns and I made together with my daughters on Christmas day 2014 her Lulu elephant pattern. My daughters were in their 20’s and had no desire to do anything.   I had selected some girly fabrics as this was the first Christmas my son was not at home: he was spending Christmas at his girlfriend’s house. I missed him, but realized that that was the way life had to go and I could and should celebrate with my girls.


Could they cut the fabrics out and put it on the Pattern Ease with the elephant pattern drawn onto it? With some hesitance, the girls put their iPhones down and started to work. We had a great time: they were chatting and laughing while cutting the fabric and within four hours Lulu had grown from a white pattern to a colorful elephant. It was almost done when it was time to make dinner and Laura, my youngest, had taken ownership. She wanted to stay involved in finishing the quilt and selecting a background. Both girls loved collaging and they thought it was the best quilt they had ever seen in the house.


Lulu became the first collage shop sample and has been admired by many. Collage was so new!  Lulu has been to Houston during the year I was selling collage patterns like hotcakes. And Lulu expressed what I really like about fabric: working with color. Collage is working with color in the way you see/feel it in a very free way. There are no quarter inch seam allowances, no points that have to match, no rulers. It’s almost like painting with fabric.

After Lulu, I made many other Laura Heine patterns in and for the shop, followed by animals inspired by travel experiences.  I worked from  photos, made collaged buildings and patterns. One of these turned into  the Scissors Class, which is really a great way to learn the basics of collaging and working with colors and designs. The Scissors Class is still a very popular class for quilt guilds and a joy to teach. It opens up the world of collaging to many quilters in person, even though by now social media has created many online instructions. Emily Woodward Taylor and her website collagequilter.com have to be mentioned here. She started collaging in 2018 and has introduced many people to this form of quilting with her videos, books and patterns.


When we were renovating the first floor of our home (right after the business was sold),  I was looking for a more abstract collage. Something that wasn’t necessarily an object that could be identified. I have seen (and have) so many animals, so many flowers…. all I wanted was something for on the wall that brought the colors of my house together.  A focus point for the family room. Organic Color Collage was born.. In this way of collage there is no pattern that has to be followed. There is no gray scale, no light source, nothing that tells you that a certain fabric has to be put somewhere. It grows organically and when I start I don’t know what it is going to look like: absolute freedom for the fabric. At the beginning,  all I know is which main colors I will use.  It’s very intuitive, but a certain rationale and critical look at fabric can be a guidance.  My latest finished quilt, The Crack, is a good sample of this. The challenge I had given myself was to use orange and red and stay away from blue (my favorite color, after beige). After it was almost done, a saw a crack, a fracture, in my quilt…There’s no way I would have said to myself ”let’s make a crack quilt”! 

When a piece becomes a larger wall hanging, there will grow some lines in color. The question becomes how do you create these lines of colors? How can you make colors flow and connect? Color Collage is not a matter of cutting big flowers out and putting them next to each other, like many vase collages are.  A maker will need much more variety in fabric styles to create a work that has some depth.  Fabric with outspoken shapes and colors in different scales are needed as are blenders to give them a context.   The amount of fabric needed is really quite large and most pieces will be tiny (less than 2”).  My guess is that a finished quilt in size 40" x 46" will have around  500 pieces of fabric. To make that feasible for a class, I'm asking students to choose between warm or cool colors and bring a good variety in either color way. By no means can we make a fabric collage in 3-4 hours (it takes me about 50 hours before I can start quilting), but this amount of time is a good start to teach an approach to this style of collaging. They can always add other colors later at home.


Thinking it would be nice to bring samples to my class, I’m in the middle of making a “cool” collage for my students to see. This quilt is now in the process of being quilted, but the picture shows you how it looks just before I took it off my design table.


Life is full of surprises: After having been a vendor for 16 years at Festival, it is an incredible honor to teach an organic color collage class in Houston. Being “upstairs” with all those talented teachers, many who have been my customers,  is like icing on the cake and I am looking forward to another Houston. My class will be on Saturday November 4th! See you there, but If you can't make it to Houston, please know that I am teaching the same class also at quilt guilds or other groups. We can make it work!