Quilt Shows and Trade Shows · Rose Cards · villa rosa designs

H&H Americas Here I Come!

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Hello Quilty Friends!

Happy Thursday to you!

Today’s blog post is coming to you live (well, sorta) from Houston, Texas! I am here for the first H&H Americas Fall Edition here in Texas. VRD will have a booth at the show and I will be helping our Rose Queen, Pat, in the booth. Catherine and Sarah from Running Does Quilts will be here, too. We are located in booth #911. If you are attending the event, I hope you’ll stop by and say howdy.

Colorful illustration of a map showing the route from Pennsylvania to Houston, Texas, with an airplane and decorative elements.
Image created by moi with AI tools

What is H&H Americas, you might ask. Well, it’s a trade show for the craft industry, including quilting, cosplay, and fibre crafts such as knitting, crochet, and wool. H&H has filled the gap left by Quilt Market, which ended last fall after many many years of leading the industry.

H&H has many similar events to Quilt Market jam-packed into 3 days. That includes exhibits, classes and workshops, the show floor, Sample It (a fun shopping experience for shop owners), and more. WHEW! It’s a veritable whirlwind of activity.

So……..here I am in Houston, TX.

Let me tell you about my trip down. My quilty pal Robin rode down with me to the Pittsburgh airport and then drove my cute little red Jeep home (she will drive it back down Saturday to collect me at the airport). Thank you, Robin. 🙂

I spent all of Tuesday traveling because I had a couple hour layover in Nashville, Tennessee. This was the first time I’ve ever been to Tennessee (I guess I can add it to the states I’ve been to now, right?). The Nashville airport was HUGE! It felt like I had to walk miles and miles to get from the gate where my flight from Pittsburgh dropped me off to the gate where I would board the plane to Houston’s Hobby Airport. The good news was that I wasn’t in a hurry as I had a couple hours until take off so I could take my time.

Of course, I grabbed some food and found a nice spot to hunker down for a while. One of my favorite things to do when I am in different places is to people watch. Someday I’m going to put my observations to good use and write some mystery fiction. Sigh……someday.

Then it was back into the air for the last leg of my trip. I was pretty exhausted by this point so I just listened to a fun cozy mystery audiobook and watched the clouds out the window. Yep, I love sitting in the window seat and enjoying the view. Which is weird, as I’m not particularly into heights, but there it is. Anyway, I took lots of interesting pictures of the clouds and photos of the ground far far below.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Aerial view of the clouds and a river reflecting sunlight, with part of an airplane wing visible in the foreground.
Check out the golden hued river. Isn’t that gorgeous?
Aerial view of a landscape under a cloudy sky with varying cloud formations and shades of gray and white.
A view of fluffy white clouds scattered against a blue sky, with soft sunlight illuminating the scene.
Aerial view of fluffy white clouds under a blue sky with sunlight rays visible. The image shows part of an airplane wing in the lower corner.
Aerial view of fluffy white clouds against a blue sky, with a partial airplane wing visible in the foreground.
Aerial view of a landscape featuring clouds and sunlight rays breaking through gray skies.
Here you can see the scattered showers over Houston.


Here is a pretty cool series of flying into, through, and out of big white fluffy clouds.

View from an airplane window showing a jet engine and thick white clouds beneath a cloudy sky.
View from an airplane window showing the wing and engine of a Southwest Airlines plane over a cloudy sky.
View from an airplane window showing a wing, clouds, and a cityscape below.

Pat picked me up in Houston, we grabbed a bite at Whataburger Have you seen their ginormous burgers??? I could only eat half of mine. LOL! Leftovers! I wish we had a Whataburger where I live, but they haven’t made it up to Northwestern Pennsylvania yet. Too bad.

After eating, we stopped at the grocery store and grabbed some breakfast and lunch stuff. Then finally to the house Pay rented. After unloading and putting things away, I collapsed on my bed and that’s where I stayed for quite some time. Wow!

SHHH! I’ll tell you a terrible secret – I am a terrible traveler. I never drink enough water, ever. It’s not like I don’t know that I should and I have every intention of doing so, but somehow chocolate milkshakes and Dr. Pepper are much more appealing and keep me awake and moving. Huh. I will just have to try harder next time. I am also a chronic over-packer. I come by this naturally, of course – I was once a Girl Scout and I like to be prepared for anything and I also inherited it from my Mom. Thanks Mom.

I have a friend named Leslie who has an amazing talent – she can pack for an entire week in a duffle bag. And I’m not talking about a big duffle bag on wheels, just a small to normal sized duffle bag that you sling over your arm. As hard as I try, I just can’t seem to channel Leslie’s skill. I wonder if there is an online class somewhere that teaches you how to pack everything you need for a week in a single bag. Sign me up for that one, please. So I brought my crossbody satchel, my laptop case, and my small suitcase. I do have a little bit of extra space just in case I find some cool stuff to take home with me (you’ll have to stop back next week to see what I found).

Well, Wednesday is set up day for the VRD booth. First, we found the booth location and went to get our badges. Happily I ran into my pal, Cathey, from Cathey Marie Designs. Of course, she was stuffing her face with chocolate. She did offer to share, bless her. Hopefully, we’ll get a few minutes at some point to catch up.

Then it was time to get busy getting the booth ready.


Here is our “before” photo of the booth:

A vendor booth setup displaying tables with various items, including colorful fabric rolls, a water bottle, and packaging boxes. There are empty chairs and a sign indicating the booth name, 'Villa Rosa Designs'. The area is enclosed by a black curtain.

And…….Voila! Here is the “after” photo of the booth.

A colorful quilt display at a craft fair booth featuring various intricate quilt patterns and vibrant fabrics, with a vendor organizing items on a table draped in purple fabric.


The show kicks off Wednesday afternoon at 4 PM for a western-themed preview night. Sadly, I didn’t bring any western togs – other than jeans, I don’t have anything western in my wardrobe, even though I live in the wilds of Pennsylvania. LOL!

It was lovely to see all those smiling people stopping by the booth!

Stop back next Thursday for more H&H F U N!

Sew. Laugh. Repeat.

Always,

Tricia @ VRD

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Published by rosecards

Quilter--designer, quiltmaker, retailer

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