May

16

May 16, 2011

I survived Market!

Filed Under Books, Quilt shops, Show & Tell 

The trip to Salt Lake City for Spring Quilt Market went “like butter.” I had a blast and a half. The good times started just as soon as the plane out of San Jose finished loading. My seat neighbor turned out to be going where I was going, so naturally we chattered like magpies the whole flight.

Julie operates an on-line boutique fabric shop, The Intrepid Thread, stocked with fresh modern fabrics. (And a whole lot of new ones coming after she saw the fabulous lines debuting at Market.)

And get this… Julie said her friend Sally, who was picking her up at the airport, would give me a ride to my hotel too! How’s that for nice? No Supershuttling! They even picked me up and took me back to the airport for the flight home!

julie-sallyThese are the sweet gals who adopted me. Julie, left, and Sally, right.

Sally Keller’s shop is Sally’s Angelworks, offering darling mini art quilts, unique fabric camera-strap covers, and other handmade items.

Julie and Sally were there to shop, of course, and also to help out Amanda Herring at the Quilted Fish booth. All of them are part of the Riley Blake design team. Whew, these young quilter gals! Enough energy to power Salt Lake City for a week! Both of them have nice Market photos and stories on their blogs.

Thursday was Schoolhouse, which is a series of short break-out sessions geared toward the shop owner, to introduce what’s new and exciting. This is how it works. Two hours before the whole deal starts, you can get the schedule. There was a huge room full of chairs where you could sit and study the offerings, plotting and scheming on which ones you wanted to go to. There were about 20 sessions in each time slot, so if there were two at once you liked, you had to pick the one you wanted most!

When each session ended, it was that silly thing that happens when elevator doors open… people wanting to get out and people wanting to get in at the same time. There were thousands of bodies, everybody had wheelie bags, and it was one great big milling churn dash. I’ll share the first couple sessions that I went to, and I’ll put up more information later, in bites.

First on the docket I chose to go hear Dan Purcell. Dan is the boy genius son of Bob and Heather Purcell of Superior Threads. Dan, a smartywhistle techie extraordinaire, grew up in the quilting industry and is the nicest, friendliest young guy you would ever want to meet. Dan operates Websites for Quilters, a company offering a whole bunch of services for quilters who want to be on the web and need a little or a lot of help.

One of the great things that Dan told us about is his FindMyFabric.com, a fabric, quilting, and sewing supply search engine. You can search for products offered by hundreds of online stores to find exactly what you are looking for. You can also search by uploading a photo of the fabric you need more of! How cool is that?? And totally free, this one.

Dan also operates QuilterBlogs.com, a directory of quilting blogs that you can check out to see what’s out there in the blogosphere.

websites-for-quilters

I bought Dan’s book so I can learn more valuable nuggets about having a quilting website.

Next I went to the presentation by Stacey Michell of Shades Textiles. Stacey’s main product is SoftFuse, a paper-backed fusible web that has become my favorite. It’s the lightest weight, and it actually works the way this type of product is supposed to work! What a concept! It fuses quickly, the paper comes off right away, and like I said it is extremely lightweight and flexible.

Stacey’s mom is Marti Michell. They were both there at the session to show us how you can use the product to do a prepared-edge type of appliqué for either hand or machine stitching. It’s fused, and the edges are turned! Very interesting! I’ll be giving this a try myself and will report the results here on the blog. I ordered some SoftFuse so I’ll be able to offer it on my website soon.

This was my favorite entry in the quilt display.

im-watching-you

I’m Watching You by Barbara McKie of Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Much more to come,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

Comments

One Response to “I survived Market!”

  1. Donna on May 17th, 2011 4:34 am

    I can see why this last pic is your favorite – it looks like a painting!
    Loved hearing about your trip to Quilt Market and look forward to more stories!