Road to Houston • UrbanAmish Lesson 3, Part 1

This year is the 30th anniversary of International Quilt Market in Houston Texas.

Every year manufacturers from all over the world hitch up their team of oxen, fill their covered wagons to overload and head for for the George R. Brown Convention Center to ply their wares.

Since I was coming here to help present my new Garden Party line from Blank Quilting, it was only appropriate to mark this Market milestone with the first public introduction of UrbanAmish and to offer on the same day to subscribed UrbanAmishers Lesson 3 Part 1 of the block formerly known as Road to Oklahoma and now dubbed Road to Houston after going for a spin on the UrbanAmish wagon. I wanted to make the download available so we could all be here together at least in spirit.

Pamela Zave, my partner in this endeavor, became enamored of this block after working through the lesson with me and did 3 lovely variations on it. She used the UrbanAmish color formula #2 from the downloadable lesson to make these. Pamela is an art quilter. She does not naturally gravitate to traditional blocks but the scale and updated color formulas seem to attract her in a way that a more traditional approach does not. I'm always thrilled to see her enthusiasm for the new UrbanAmish lesson because she is not an easy woman to convince. (By the way, Pamela just received the great news that one of her quilts will be published in a new book by Lark called 500 Art Quilts due out Spring 2010.)

Here are her three Road to Houston test beauties.


A fresh red and green and soft yellows combination.


An apple green block.


And a yellow and blue texturally roiling sample.

But you know what? I'm going to make this blog post a short one.
In a few hours I need to be at the Blank booth to give my talk and I'm simply too excited to sit at my laptop typing. I want to go look at quilts and see my friends that I only get to see once a year here.

When I get back home I'll write more in depth when I post the second part of the Road to Houston lesson. The Road to Houston is long, twisty and very exciting and after writing 14 pages I realized it was going to have to be presented in two parts.

At the very end of this post you will see an image of the first page of the lesson. Click on the image to download lesson. And if you are curious about my new line for the wonderful people of Blank Quilting visit my web site: www.urban-amish.com

BUT! Just one more story to share before I close down my laptop.

Here is a picture of a wonderful surprise that arrived in the mail just before I left to come here. This little bag below is Sassy, by my friend, the wonderful Joan Hawley of Lazy Girl Designs fame.



Sassy's new dress is from my new Garden Party line in the Navy/Wasabi colorway.
She's trim and petite but she carries all you need without breaking her stride. And what a charmer out on the convention floor! People talk me just because she's so cute.

Take good care, UrbanAmishers!


Click here to download lesson.