Come along on Our Market Tour

The actual Market part of Quilt Market only lasts 3 days. But of course there are meetings, dinners, classes that stretch our trip to 6-7 days. During that time you have a chance to chat with the "celebs" of quilting, with vendors and manufacturers of fabric, batting, thread, notions and more. We were delighted to meet Heather Bailey, a very talented young lady. We're posing with her in front of her new fabric line. We loved it and ordered accordingly. You are going to love it too, I"m sure. I learned only today that Heather is the daughter of elinor peace bailey the famous doll maker. Her brother is a famous photographer too. What a family heritage.

The official announcement has been made: My good friend, Karen Snyder is now the spokesperson for Elna sewing machines. Congratulations Karen! Other spokeswomen include Marie Osmond for Janome, Eleanor Burns for Viking and more. I've owned an Elna 6003 for several years and am quite happy with it. Can you believe it, Karen, YOUR face on the posters. And I knew you when.....

Each booth at Quilt Market is unique, portraying the personality of the booth owner. It might be a pattern designer, a fabric company....it may exude a feeling of calm, of electricity...or a trademark design. Sandy Klopp who designs fabric (for Moda) and quilt patterns under the name American Jane. Look at the great black and white striped awning valence! It plays so very well with the bright primary colors of her 30-ish, Dick and Jane-ish, Elementary School-ish fabrics. Sandy's fabrics are happy, evoking good childhood memories for the Baby Boomers and their children and their children's children.

Quilt Market is not all work and no play. Many of the fabric companies host dinners, parties and the like. We usually get more invitations than we can attend. Saturday night we started out at the Moda Party, probably the largest party of Market. It always includes an awesome dinner and fabulous entertainment. We dined with 3 ladies from a shop in Florida and 3 ladies from another fabric company (they'll remain nameless since they were "crashing the party"). Then the Flamico dancers came out. They were beautiful the way the moved. A Salsa dance team performed and then we snuck out.....to the Robert Kaufmann Fabrics party! Parties, parties....Sunday night we went to Classic Cotton's party and met up with my "posse," a group of shop owners I meet with on a regular basis. Off to bed too, too late. More next time.

More Glimpses of Market

We're back from Quilt Market and over the next couple of days I'll try to give you more glimpses of Market. We arrived the first day about 10 minutes before they opened the doors. There was already a crowd of 400-500 waiting. We had a 9:30 am appointment with one of our Sales Reps so when they opened the doors we raced to Aisle 1300 to the EE Schenck booth. We spent 1 1/2 hours with Jan and still didn't finish! We had to come back at the end of the day to finish up.
Then we rushed to Moda. You can see us at the table ordering from Carol. In the background are patten designer booths. L-R: Sandi Klopp (that's her hubby in the snazzy red suspenders) "American Jane," "Me & My Sister" and "Chez Moi."






Here you can see Liz "walking the aisle." We do a LOT of this! We only take 4 appointments at Market, but we order fabric from many companies.






As you walk the aisles you see many familiar faces: Liz is posing with Jay McCarroll. He was the winner of the first season of Project Runway and besides designing clothing he is now designing Quilting Fabric for Westminster. He was outrageously fun. Marie Osmond was going to be at Market on Sunday and he said he'd be first in line to get her autograph!





Next, I am at the United Notions booth ordering new books, patterns and notions. The Saleswomen is down in the bottom center of the picture. Notice she's wearing a blouse made of the same Moda Fabrics as the bag on the ironing board. Many sales people are dressed in clothing to represent their companies.



We all notice different things at Market. Bill took this last picture because he liked the wooden Victorian cut-out trim in the corners. When I saw the picture I recognized Nancy Halvorsen who designs under the name of "Art to Heart." She has two new books out and we have them both at the store. Check out the "So many days till Christmas" countdown table topper we have in the store.

Quilt Market Friday

Friday at Fall Market means School House. This is an entire day of classes. At 9:30 am they pass out a booklet listing all the various classes being offered each session. Note that there are 15 sessions AND a 30 min. introduction and a lunch period. Here is my friend, Sandi Brawner (she owns an awesome shop, Quilt Country in Lewiston, TX. Sandi was explaining how to run a block of the month program and showing off one of their new patterns. Don't you love her lime green tie-dye shirt? Sandi always says that lime green is a neutral! Then in another class about how to use big prints effectively my good friend (and Mexican Cruise cabin-mate) Karen Snyder shows off one of the quilts in her new book: Big Print Quilts.

Each of these classes is only 15 minutes to 30 minutes long and there may be 300 or 30 in a class depending on the subject. I took classes on 8 Essential Things a Shop Owner Should Do, Jo Morton and her new fabric line, How to use Cut Goods (like Jelly rolls, charm packs, etc) and so many more. At lunch we (Bill, Liz & I) found a table and over our bagels shared our class experiences. Liz took a class on publishing. Bill took a class on rulers.
At 6 pm we were done and we were tired! My feet hurt and I was hungry. There weren't any food vendors open in the convention center so we schlepped out stuff out to the car and began to walk through downtown. We needed to find a place we could walk to. Liz asked a street cop if there was anywhere we could get a good, quick meal and he directed us to a Chinese place. It was serene, quiet and cool. Perfect! Sitting down to a table with white tablecloth and glasses of iced water was heaven!

Then it was back to the convention center for Sample Spree. Note the sign: No Rolling Luggage allowed! This event is a madhouse. You have never seen so many people (mostly women)

grabbing, tugging, elbowing their way to the tables to buy Fat Quarter towers, jelly rolls, patterns, sample aprons and more. We didn't plan to buy very much. But we'll be carrying at least a 50 lbs. suitcase full of stuff and probably shipping boxes too!
Here's a picture of the BEGINNING of the line to get in. Behind the glass partition in the back of the picture the line divides and goes on for at least 100 yards in each direction 6 or 8 deep. This line is probably 30 people wide. Well, off to be again. Tomorrow I'll report on Sat.....where we met Heather Bailey and ordered her new fabric and surprise, surprise for those of you who are Project Runway fans.....2nd Season Jay McCarrol now designs fabric for Westminster. Lots more to share and lots and lots of pictures.

Quilt Market, Here We Come!

Today was Tuesday. Tomorrow is Wednesday. Early Thursday Mr. Scottie Dog, Liz & I will head to the airport and begin our journey to Houston, TX and Quilt Market. We'll see thousands of quilts, bags, runners and more. We'll see new patterns, books & fabric. Lots of booths will be touting the "next best-selling, you can't live without it" notion. There will be lots of products claiming to be "green" (some with merit and some not). We'll rub shoulders with Jo Morton, Terry Atkinson, Eleanor Burns, Amy Butler, Sandi Gervais, Karen Snyder, Marie Osmond and more. Marie Osmond???? Yes, a few years ago Marie began to design fabric (read, put her name on it) and now she is the spokesperson for a brand of sewing machines. One of the best things is that all these "quilt-famous" people are just people like you and me. They are, by and large, nice people (aren't ALL quilters nice?) who are amazed that we actually like their work.
I don't know if I'll have a chance to blog while I am there....I'll certainly try. I'm excited about seeing what's new and you can be sure I'll be thinking of each of you and what I can bring to YOUR quilting world.

Mystery Quilting Retreat

Today is the last day of our Scottie Dog Quilts Fall Mystery Quilting Retreat. Why "Mystery?" Because no one knows what their quilt will look like. We give them instructions on how much of what kind of fabric to bring and they blindly follow our directions. We have quilters from all over ...many repeaters and a few "newbies" or retreat "virgins." We've had an Aloha theme this retreat, including our first dinner catered by a local Hawaiian restaurant The Banana Hut. YumYum, the are "da kine."
Imagine 30 women all with wonderful fabrics, laughing, chocolate, good food. Anne was the first one with her quilt finished. Isn't is luscious? The name of the pattern is "Juicy Fruit." It will be available at the store and on our website next week.
One of the things we do at our retreats is a lotto block. You bring 2 blocks according to our theme (this time 1930's prints) and one block goes to Sunshine (a charity group that send quilts to children) and the other goes into the pot for someone to win.
I've got to get back to retreat....maybe I'll see you here someday!

Minnesota Bathroom

One of the reasons we went to Minnesota was to put in a new bathroom in the basement of Beka & Jason's new home. So Mr. Scottie Dog took time off working in OUR new bathroom to work from dawn till past midnight on the Minn. remodel. While still in Eureka, he drew out the plans. Beka and Jason helped out some, learning a bit about sheetrock, electric wiring, painting and the like along the way. First comes the demolition. It's a dirty job and a hard one needing a jackhammer to get through the concrete slab floor. I think the job took longer and cost more than we all had hoped, but it turned out beautiful. A new hallway and corner closet were also constructed. Bill put in a shower/tub unit (that came into the house with scant 1/2" to spare!" They had to put up the walls, put in the plumbing, the wiring, sheetrock, tape & mud & sand the sheetrock before the painting could be done. Then the flooring was laid down. The floor is a vinyl sheet that looks like slate. When you walk on it, it feels like slate since it has concrete under it. The new toilet and pedestal sink were installed. During the process various inspectors had to come check out the work. One took issue with the electrical wiring in the basement room (the bathroom was, of course, perfect!) and so another trip to Home Depot (was the trip #6 or 7?) to get new lights for the ceiling of the basement. I don't have a finished picture of the bathroom yet...when we left it had a mirrored cabinet and light over the sink and Jason has a shelving unit to put up over the toilet. But it was wonderful. Thanks are not enough to Mr. Scottie Dog (who worked like a dog!) on his vacation time. The bathroom, closet & hallway all added many, many thousands of $$$ to the value of their house, not to mention the convenience for their guests not having to run up the stairs to a bathroom!