Covering the world's major art fairs is de rigeur for the arts reporter. Between Basel and Berlin, Miami and Milan, Santiago and Shanghai, my life is a whirlwind of luxury airport lounges, business card confetti and fabulous works of art. The opportunity to cover this week's International Quilt Festival, or what I've termed "Quilts2010" at downtown's George R. Brown Convention Center was, in a word, momentous — not only in my career, but in the history of art criticism.

Dubbed "The World's Fair of Quilts," Quilts2010 brings together the globe's top talent in fiber art. As the largest annual quilt show, sale and quiltmaking academy in the world, it's a fine art craft extravaganza. As I was escorted into the convention center on opening day, the excitement was palatable. I observed top quilters taking photographs in front of their handicraft and festival chiefs commuting between booths on golf carts. The mere whirring of the mini cars on bright red carpeting made my heart skip a beat.

I first took note of the finishing touches being laid on the installation of quilt world darling Sharon Schamber's "Mystique," the winner of the $10,000 Handi Quilter Best of Show Award. While Schamber's technique is admirable, I silently shuffled passed her work in search of greener pastures. I migrated towards a collection of colonial quilts that colonized the back section of "Column M" (Quilts2010 fills the entire convention center, so it's advisable to use a buddy system as not to lose track of your assistant).

So dazzled was I by the arrangement of antebellum quilts that I found myself sitting on the convention center's floor in awe. I took secret delight in the allusions to Jasper Johns' flag paintings. But rather than channelling the aesthetic of Johns' dystopian Manhattan, these artworks ooze the kitsch charm of middle America. I couldn't help but notice the other critics bemoaning the obligatory inclusion of Americana, but they can't see what I see. Susan Sontag must be rolling in her grave.

Strolling among the 1,400 quilts and fiber art on display, distinct themes begin to emerge. The prevalence of house pets makes itself apparent on the fabric collages, as evidenced in Pamela Seaberg's "Sinbad's Cymbidium's." Similarly, Barbara McKie's depiction of a lhaso apso in "I'm Watching You!," is a remarkably conceived canine image done via digital transfer of disperse dye to polyester, painted thread, machine appliqué, machine quilting and trapunto. Explains McKie in her accompanying artist's statement:

Such breathtaking intellectual rigor simply isn't present at the other contemporary art fairs. Take another example: Pauline Salzman's "It's Only Rock'n Roll" incorporated her own jeans for the quilt, imbuing it with the "found objects" sensibility of Robert Rauschenberg's early combines or Kurt Schwitter's Merz.

It goes without saying that the contemporary artists represented at Quilts2010 are unafraid to take risks. Several artists summoned their will to take the quilt off its foot-of-the-bed pedestal, repositioning the item as wearable art, akin to a high-end Snuggie. It could even be argued that Kyoko Akaike's "Blue Planet" looks like it was shoplifted from a sale bin at Chico's, but I also wouldn't be surprised if I walked in on a bidding war on the object between such high-profile shoppers as Michael Ovitz, the former Hollywood agent, Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire and London collector Pauline Karpidas.

With any major international art event, there's always the "game changer" — an artist who will forever alter the landscape of contemporary art. For Quilts2010, my pick for this position would have to be Roberta Deluz of Benicia, Calif. Her work, "It Came from Beneath the Sea," depicts a particularly mischievous cephalopod enveloping an architectural monument. Deluz cites "B" movies as her inspiration. Her (assumedly) intentionally naïve handiwork and the appropriation of film imagery takes the genius of Christian Marclay to a whole new level. This is the quilter to watch in the upcoming years.

Political quilts are currently enjoying a comeback, as witnessed in "Geroge aka Western Burning Bush" by Heidi Beltz-Sandkuhle, which riffs on the common name of a vernacular plant growing in Santa Cruz Count, Calif.: the western burning bush, which here is radically reactivated as it is juxtaposed with an image of President George W. Bush's head engulfed in flames.

The über relevant topic of Roma gypsies is touched upon by the doll installation, Gypsy Challenge. Nicolas Sarkozy's gypsy witch hunt has met its match in this collection of rainbow-hued resemblances of European street culture. The generous use of metallic thread has been deemed by some critics as too "boisterous," but from an internship at Holocaust Museum Houston, I can verify that these artists are being true to their subject.

I didn't have the stamina to check in at some of Quilts2010's sundry amenities, such as "Make It University!," a special section of the show floor that features vendors, special exhibits and on-site classes that celebrate the "crossover" arts of scrapbooking, rubber stamping, paper art and mixed media projects. I fully intend to revisit the fair this weekend with a box of checkbooks in tow, so that I may purchase a few quilts to adorn the walls of my second, third and fourth homes in Round Rock, Aspen and Meyerland.

Like gold bricks or black truffles, quality quilts are international currency, as proven by some key figures that appeared this year in a study by Quilting in America. The value of the U.S. quilting market, for example, exceeds $3.5 billion, a nearly three-fold increase since 1997. The average quilter is female, 62 years old, affluent (the study cites an average $91,602 household income) and can attest to quilting for 16 years. What's more,14 percent of U.S. households (16.38 million) are home to at least one active quilter. That means that if you life in a house of 100 people, 14 of them are quilters.

What this all adds up to is a critical mass of art enthusiasts who have managed to seize their creative potential and harness it into an economic boom in the midst of a crippling recession. The quilting industry even trickles down to the real estate market, as 85 percent of registered quilters have a room in their home dedicated to sewing/quilting activities.

It's no secret that when it comes to international art fairs, the after parties and associated events are just as important, if not more so, than the art itself. And so it was with great pleasure that I flashed my press pass and waltzed into the fair's most exclusive VIP pavilion, the Husbands Lounge. Taking a page from Richard Hamilton's iconic collage, "Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?," the lounge was lavishly appointed with the vocabulary of American leisure: issues of Esquire and Car and Driver, a flat screen TV and a retro VCR. I must divulge that the arrangement of LA-Z-BOYs made for an ideal setting for expert networking.

As I lit a Dunhill in the backseat of the CultureMap towncar while we zoomed down Avenida de las Americas, I was still exasperated by the sheer amount of talent I observed at Quilts2010. It's a pity to think that a deluge of tourists and amateur art collectors may discover this gem of a fair, but perhaps it's for the best that it achieve the household recognition it so rightly deserves. In any case, it is with great anticipation that I await the glories of Quilts2011.