I’ve been so busy shipping orders that I have not had time to blog this past week. As many of you know I have a new product, Karen Kay Buckley’s Perfect Scissors. They come in two sizes, 7 1/2″ and 4″. This has been a real labor of love for me. I’ve been working on this project for the past 3 or 4 years. I’ve been selling other brands of serrated scissors but there were a couple of things I wished could be improved. I wanted a safety shield for the scissors. I wanted comfortable soft grip handles. And I wanted my scissors to be sharp to the very point. And I wanted all of this at a good price. After several years of working on this project the scissors finally arrived last Thursday. Yippee! I posted a newsletter and am happy to say lots of you have ordered. And I’ve gotten emails back from several of you telling me how much you love your scissors. It’s hard for me to explain to you how much your comments mean to me. Thank you so much for supporting my decision to have the scissors made. If you are not on my newsletter list please go to my “store” page and click on “scissors” for more information.
International Quilt Festival in Houston. What can I say. Another awesome year. Even though I taught every single day while I was there I did find time to do a little shopping and most importantly to look at the quilts. Here are a couple of the top winners.
Best of Show was Sharon Shambers quilt Mystique. It is an amazing quilt. Sharon has won many, many awards and they are will deserved. Her workmanship is beyond belief. You can find more about Sharon at www.sharonschamber.com
Here are some close-up shots. Quilting with black thread. Now that took some guts. The areas in red are covered pieces of cording. The black area you see behind the red cording is the black backdrop behind the quilt. The area between the red cording is actually an open area.
Pat Holly won one of the top awards. She won the Maywood Studio Master Award for Innovative Artistry. Pat’s work is also incredible. It’s all in the details. Pat’s quilt Paisley Peacock is machine appliqued with tiny buttonhole stitches over the raw edge. Done to perfection.
The Founders Award went to this incredible Baltimore Album quilt. Nancy Kern’s is the maker of this quilt, Mary Simon Rediscovered. You can find out more about Nancy at www.nancykerns.com Nancy closely reproduced an antique quilt from the DAR museum. Stunning.
This is another of the top prize winners, Royal Amethyst. The maker is Rachelle Denneny from South Australia. This award was sponsored by eQuilter.com and it was called The World of Beauty award. You can find out more about Rachelle at http://amqretreat.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=38:rachelle-denneny&catid=11:teachers 
This quilt, Eternal Garden won the Robert S. Cohen Master Award for Traditional Artistry. I believe this quilt was entirely sewn by hand. The maker is Yoko Sugisawa from Toyoko, Japan.
I’ll share more quilts from the International Quilt Association show in my next blog. Stay tuned.