Quilt Market Report

Sheesh — I can’t even manage to get a few market reports together this week. It’s been really busy here. My beloved Aunt Annie has been here all week and we’ve been playing and eating. She even made her famous sweet rolls today — I’m stuffed! I’m hoping to get back to a more normal this week — reading blogs and answering e-mails.

So. Spring Market. It was SOOO fun. Of course, being from Utah, I could be a little biased. I sure wish Quilts, Inc. would hold every fall market in Salt Lake and put Houston on the spring rotation. No offense to you Houston friends, but just look. Mountains. Check out this beauty —

Can you top that??? That’s a shot of Mount Timpanogos from the airplane as we flew into Salt Lake City. I had big plans of hiking the back side of Timp with The Gulls, but doh! I forgot about the snow! You can hike right across that gorgeous ridge and it’s super fun.

Ok.  So, it felt like we hit the ground running.  The first few days are always all about booth set up and sample spree.  Here’s a shot of Jan at the Don’t Look Now table at sample spree.  We were only a row away from the Moda tables.  See those stacks of fat quarter packs behind her?  That’s the moda booth during set up.

And this was the Moda booth after they let the crowds in.  It was cah-razy.  Like a bunch of locusts who swarmed in and cleaned all that fabric off of the tables.

The day after sample spree, market starts.  We had a great location this year — we were kitty (ha!) corner from Holly and Pam Kitty Morning and Elizabeth.  Three whole days and did I get a picture?  Nooooo.  But I did have a good time asking Pam each morning if she was having a Pam Kitty Morning.  She always gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up.  Her new fabric is ADORABLE.  Pam cracked me up during clean up when I ran into her in the lobby.  She was carrying 4 chairs out to their trailer and she looked at me.  “Not a Pam Kitty Morning” she said.  Too funny!

Here’s a shot of our booth.  Kellie had five new patterns this time, so she decided to put mini-beds in the booth, as the wall space was in short supply.  I met tons of blogger friends for the first time at market, and topping the list was sweet Denice who provided props for the booth.  Denice is amazing and I was lucky enough to be able to meet her at her home, surrounded be several of her cute children.  Thanks for all of your help Denice — I really wish we’d had more time to visit!

That’s the hardest part of market for me — we’re always so busy in the booth, I don’t get much time to sneak out and take pictures. And even less time to visit with friends.  Luckily, lots of blogger friends came by the booth. I loved meeting Nanette and Shelby (oh to have more time to quilt and play together!),  Kristyne, Amber, Sherri, Lori, Vanessa, Kim — and I’m sure I’m forgetting several others. Last time I forgot about Sharon. No forgetting her this time — we were stalking each other on the first day of market. And I ran into Ms. Farmhouse while I was on a coffee run for the Gulls — we’d been standing next to each other in line for a few minutes before we even realized what was going on.  And, as you’ll notice — I didn’t get any pictures of any of the above.  What a sorry excuse for a blogger!  I was so sorry to have missed the big blogger party on Saturday night — everyone said they had such a wonderful time and it would have been so fun just to have some time to visit with everyone.

Anyway, on the few moments that I managed to escape from the booth, I took a few pictures.  LOVE that giant prince charming from Tula Pink!

And can someone please remind me who’s pretty booth this is?  I loved the colors.

Bonnie and Camille’s booth is always so pretty.  It was super fun to see the famous polka dotted rocker back in the corner behind Camille.

Sigh. Swoon. Sarah Jane — new designer for Michael Miller. More on her in a later post.

 The Sweetwater booth — it was hard to get a good photo as it was crowded when I was there. 

Riley Blake.  Oh how I want that bike!

Lori’s new Sew Cherry line for Riley Blake.  Yummy!

The Basic Grey booth — or, rather one of the pictures in their booth.  Their booth was swamped when I was there too — SO cute!

Jan taking a picture at The Quilted Fish booth.  They had SO much cute stuff — just look at that adorable upolstered chair up front!

A close up of what Jan was zooming in on — aren’t those hats adorable?

I liked this quilt in the United Notions booth.  Can anyone remember the name of the company that designed this quilt?  She had a darling booth with a cute pillow that I’d really like to make.

And one other booth that I failed to get a picture of — the Jillilly studio booth — it was fantastic– you can see it on her blog.  Her niece stopped in the Don’t Look Now booth and she mentioned that they were serving sorbet — I may or may not have beat her back to her booth for a little treat.  If only I’d known that The Quilted Fish was serving cupcakes on the first day LOL!!!

Sorry to have kept you for so long….next up will be the Gulls.  They were once again in fine form!!!
XOXO,
Anna

(Warning:  Long Post Ahead.)

Well, by now, you’re probably sick of reading quilt market posts all over blogland.  I’m always slow since I don’t take my laptop with me and I’m so tired when I get home.  Market was tons of fun, but a lot of work too.  Kellie opted for a double booth this time and we went from this

to this.  Good thing she had a double booth — it was crowded like this a lot.  I didn’t manage to get a good empty-booth shot.

Poor Shandi wasn’t able to make the trip (not going to trust my baby to any shipping guy!) so Kellie brought a new light fixture from Australia.  Isn’t it pretty?  All those little flowers are cut out of plastic and we put it together the night before set up.  I’m wondering how she made the trip home — it seems like she must’ve been squished.

Anyway, on to the people.  My first encounter was a total surprise.  My sweet blog friend Karin couldn’t come to market, so she sent me a present, hand delivered by a friend that works in a quilt shop with her.  Look at this beautiful necklace, hand made by Karin!

What a thoughtful gift.  I had no idea that Karin was sending me something and it was such a nice surprise after two days working to set up the booth.  Thank you so much Karin — I LOVE it!!!

Then, I was thrilled to meet Flat Nat, all the way from Australia.  I’ve read about her with envy, so I was so excited to actually meet and hold her.  (I might have whispered sweet nothings into her ear.)

And look who she brought with her — her mother Natalie and Leanne.  Soooo fun to meet these two — they stopped by several times during market and they’re both just as sweet and cute as can be.  I felt like the booth just lit up every time they came by.

The next few days were a big blur and I get a big fat F+ in remembering to get the camera out.  Beth was my first invisible friend to stop by and luckily for me, she came back to visit a few more times ’cause it got busy in the booth.  What a cutie!  And what a surprise — I had it in my mind that she’s short and blond — haha — she’s tall and brunette!  It’s so cool to meet imaginary friends in real life!  Another surprise was Penny.  She always posts about outdoor trips with her hubby so I pictured her more as the rugged outdoor type.  She was so amazingly soft-spoken and pretty with her cute curly hair!  (Hi you two — thanks for stopping by several times — I so enjoyed talking to you both!)  I also had fun meeting Sheree (Penny was her sidekick) — her booth was right next to the ladies room, so I waved as I ran by.  Shortly after meeting Penny, Jackie came along.  Jackie and I have e-mailed for years (ha! — that’s blog years) so it was super fun to meet her too.  There were lots of others too — Elizabeth, PKM (apparently before her accident), Kathy, Pat, and probably a few that I can’t remember (I’m sorry — you can’t expect much from someone who had to crawl around on the floor as much as I did!  Aaaccckkkk! And  Sharon!  How could I forget Sharon???  She was wandering around with Nancy NoBlogBlogs and I practically accosted her when I saw her!)

We also had a steady supply of the famous too.  Brandon Mably was absolutely smitten with Kellie’s designs.  Early Saturday morning, before Jan and I arrived at the booth, he brought Kaffe by for a visit.  Kellie was on the ceiling the rest of the day!  I only got two pictures of the famous with Kellie.  Here are the Piece O’ Cake girls — I’ve loved their designs for years and I’m so sad I missed their booth.

And Jane Sassaman — just as sweet as can be.  (Ok, I do have one more picture of Kellie with someone, but I have no idea who it is, so I can’t post it and embarrass myself — you know, in case it’s someone REALLY famous!)

Kellie’s booth was in prime real estate territory.  Right in front of us was Anna Griffin.  ANNA GRIFFIN!  Ohhh, the eye candy!  Her booth was gorgeous — walls at each corner so that guests entered the booth in the middle of each of the four sides.  There was a beautiful big vase of fresh flowers in the very middle of the booth.

Each outside wall had an idea board for each of her four fabric lines.  This is the wall that was directly across from us.

It contains her new Christmas line, due out in May 2011 — I think it’s beautiful!

Kitty-corner and behind us was Kaffe Fasset’s booth.  During a quiet moment, Jan and I ran around to his booth.  Jan managed to sit down and have a little chat with him.

What a nice man!  He was working on a needlepoint of a fish.

And isn’t his booth beautiful?

Kitty-corner behind the Anna Griffin booth was Michael Miller.  They always have a fun time and this time, they had one of those booths where you grab a bunch of paper.  I have no idea what it was for, but this guy was having a good time.

I loved the big mannequins in the Michael Miller booth.  And see those big porthole windows at the top of the picture?  That’s where people stand and take all those aerial views of quilt market.

Like this one!

I didn’t even come close to seeing all the booths at market, and I certainly didn’t get many pictures.  I always love to get a picture of Anne’s gorgeous booth though.  It was fun to see Anne and her sidekick Anne again.  Next time we need to have a picture taken of an Anne-Anna-Anne sandwich!

And one last picture (whew!) — this must be the nicest designer in all of marketland.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen her without a smile on her face.  Jan and I happened by her booth during set up and she treated us like old friends, even though she had no idea who we were — what a sweetheart.

Ok, that’s enough.  Sorry it was so long!  One more here’s-what-I-bought-at-sample-spree post and we’ll be done.  Trust me, market posts are way more exciting than what’s going on around here — which is a whole lotta nothing.  (Oooh, I forgot, I did get together with the quilty peeps — I’ll have to show you what they’re working on.)

XOXO,
Anna

Man, oh man, another market is over and I’m d.e.a.d. tired!  I got back late Tuesday night and I think I’ve been sleeping ever since then.  Which is quite a feat, since I’ve actually been at work for two days.

Once again, those Australian gulls (translation: girls) wore me out.  (I’m the self-appointed translator for the gulls.  They did much better this time, but there were still people who had trouble tuning their ear to the AustRALian accent.)  Anyway, we had another wonderful time with tons of really hard work and lots of fun.

The week was really a blur and I’m sure I have my events out of order.  The first night of booth set-up, we took a field trip to Ikea.  We’d been working hard all day and we were running late, so we decided to take in the fine dining of the Ikea cafeteria.  We were laughing a lot, but really, it wasn’t too bad!

I’d heard so much about the swedish meatballs on blogs that I had to give them a go (translation: I had to try them.)  Kellie and I loved the lingonberry jam or jelly or chutney or whatever-it-was sauce.  Yum, Yum.  The sauce and the apple (in the corner of the picture) provided the fruit, and therefore made the dinner healthy.

We had to hurry and shop before the store closed.  I’m not sure what Kellie was doing here, but I’m pretty sure no hats were harmed in the making of this picture.

After a blitz through the store, checkout was pretty entertaining.  The gulls aren’t big fans of the self checkout.   Especially the signing of the little box with the stylus part.  I can’t remember what’s different about here and AU but there was something amiss.  I was feeling very international — shopping with Australians in a Swedish store in Houston.  You know.   Texas.  A country unto itself.

Since the gulls were so well behaved and didn’t make me chase them anywhere, the next night I “let” (haha) them have a little visit to Anthropologie. Oh My.  We all love that store.  Look at the super cute paper plate display on one of the walls.

Some of those paper plates are embroidered with food and words.  Too Cute!

Kellie was fascinated by the sunglasses.  Do they have sunglasses in Australia?  Surely, they must.

And Jan was faux-modeling the sweaters.  I tried to get her to buy this cute little number — maybe next time.  Not that I’m telling tales or anything, but we sort of had to drag one little clothes-loving shopper out of there, practically kicking and screaming.  (Anthropologie SLC stock up!)

By now, it was after 9 p.m. and we were hungry so we wandered (translation: limped with SORE feet) the streets looking for food.  Not having a car this time sort of put a crimp in our style.  (The gulls very rudely made fun of me because I don’t know how to use a taxi.  It’s not my fault I didn’t know that the light on the top of the cab means it’s empty — I never need a taxi!)   All this limping and  I was happily distracted by the pretty bow on Banana Republic’s head.  The Christmas decorations were gorgeous, even if I was a little miffed that they were up before Halloween.

Still no restaurant, but we hopped into a Walgreens for lollies.  (Lollys?  Translation: Candy)  At this point, the gulls almost reverted to their old Target wandering ways — they split up and I had to keep one eye on each of them.  Kellie went to the lollies

and Jan hit the magazine rack.  How on earth do mothers of twins do it?  You’d think I’d be better at this by now!

After Walgreen’s we wandered a bit more and landed at P.F. Chang’s for a late dinner.  In the bar, to avoid a wait for a table.  And if you can believe it, two someones tried to pick my cute little twins up.  Sheesh, you can’t take those two  anywhere!  (I think it helped that the someones appeared to be spanish-speaking and they only understood english.  Since the gulls don’t speak english, they were safe.)

So, this was the scene, late every night.  Returning to the hotel, dog tired.  This may have been the night that the cash box almost ended up in the hands of one very un-deserving waitress.

But, that’s a story for another day, this post has rambled on long enough! Next time I’ll tell you all about who I met and almost met at market. (I know you’re just waiting on the edge of your seats. Ha!)

XOXO,
Anna

@Warning: Long Post Ahead@

The Twins. The *Gulls*. Jan and Kellie. It’s so hard to know where to start with these two. Considering I only knew Kellie from blog reading for the last 3 years and I didn’t know Jan at all, it could have all gone so wrong. But, instead, we got along so amazingly well and we had more fun than three invisible friends should be allowed to have. Kellie made me laugh non-stop and I adored Jan — we bonded as only ladies-in-waiting to the queen could!

I was amazed at how well The Twins functioned on almost no sleep. I picked them up from the airport at 7:30 in the morning and took them to the hotel to freshen up and take showers and maybe nap? But no, they wanted to power through and adjust to their new time zone. Fabric shopping priorities are international, so we went immediately to St. Croix County Dry Goods in Hudson, Wisconsin for a little fabric shopping. The *Gulls* do appear to be listing a little — I supposed it’s understandable if you’ve been up for almost 40 hours.

After this first day, the days sort of all ran together for me — I don’t think we got any more than 5, maybe 6 hours of sleep any night, all week. On the evening of the first day or early the second morning *someone* let a teeny tiny little naughty word slip and the ice was broken. After that, we were constantly laughing and giggling. The *Gulls* proceeded to make fun of the odd things they saw (the water level in our toilets, our uni-colored currency, MY driving … the list is endless.) So, I defended myself in the only way I knew how….I made fun of the way they speak.

Apparently Australians don’t speak English. I got a big kick out of watching people in the booth, as they adjusted their thinking to *AustrALian*. Here are a few clips:

• “Kellie uses a *roar* edge applique method.”   A What? As they look around the booth — are there lions in here?

• “How you goin’?” Which, when spoken in the rapid fire AustrALian method, sounds like “Now you goin’?” I swear, I saw at least one lady step back out of the booth and question if it was time for her to leave. By the end of the show, I actually got Kellie to say “How are you doing?” instead.

• “Here’s our *PATun*”. Your what?

• And, not an interaction with customers, but while in the booth, my cell phone buzzed. I looked and it was Kellie calling me. She was standing right next to me, but her phone was in her hip pocket. “Kellie, you’re butt dialing me” I said. “I’m *WHOT*”??? I had to explain the term butt dialing. An hour later, it happened again and it went to my voice mail, which was probably an expensive international call. Then, the next day, it happened again. I just looked at Kellie with my phone in my hand and said “Kellie”, and she very innocently asked if she was butt dialing me again, except that she got the term “butt dialing” all wrong which sent us all into hysterical fits of laughter that lasted the rest of the week.

Maybe they were only speaking funny because I scared the bejeebus out of them with my driving? In my defense, we didn’t have any accidents. And we were talking. Do you know how hard it is to concentrate on your driving with two quick speaking Aussies in the car? All my skills were being used in interpretation. All their skills were being used clutching the dashboard. I almost drove on the WRONG side of the road to put them at ease. One night, on the way to The Mall of America, I missed the exit, so I showed them how to get back on the right road without over-shooting the interchange and turning around. We rode the jughandle rollercoaster.

We were all laughing hysterically (hey, nervous laughter on their part counts, doesn’t it?) I was just warming them up for the Mall of America rollercoasters. I was laughing so hard while we zipped around those loops that I had tears in my eyes!

But, by far, we had the most fun when we were shopping. We worked like dogs during the day, so our evening shopping excursions were our reward. The Twins were like kids in a candy store at JoAnn’s.

And Treadle was super fun too. Try and get your average American fabric clerk to convert feet to meters.

And Target. The downtown Minneapolis Target is awesome.

That’s Kellie in the red cardigan and Jan in the green one. No need to adjust your monitors. Kellie insisted her hot pink cardigan was red, so Jan and I insisted that Jan’s was green. It worked for us! Most of the time, I felt like a mother hen, keeping an eye on my straying peeps who never stood still.

We had SO very much fun. I wish you all could have been with us. Here’s a picture of the Twins taking a picture of my feet on a big bear footstool at a Caribou coffee shop.

And my feet. My poor tired feet. We got kicked out of the coffee shop at closing time ’cause we were too tired to walk back to the hotel so we were just hanging out. (Sorry for the dark *Nick-on* camera pictures.)

I could write many more posts about these two. About the time when Kellie walked into the hotel revolving door the wrong direction and it chased her around until she exited. (Apparently, just like drains, they go in the opposite direction here?) Or the discovery that our hotel rooms don’t have auto-flush toilets. OR the REALLY big discovery on the last day that those two don’t prewash any fabrics. The SHOCK. The HORROR! To think that I spent a whole week with people from the wrong side of the washing machine!

I know you’re horrified too, so I’ll just leave you with a parting shot of the three of us in our cute booth uniforms. (I was too tall for the camera. ;-) ) By the end of the trip, I was starting to feel like one of the *Gulls*. And the last night, it was even confirmed, when we went straight from booth tear down to a restaurant and some goofball asked us if we coordinated our outfits (all white shirts and blue jeans). Smart Alec. If all went well, the Twins should be arriving back home about now. Thank you, Thank you *Gulls*,  for a fantastic time. If you two had half as much fun as I did, then I think the week was a success!

XOXO,
Anna