Quilt Market, Day 1

Greetings from Houston! I’m here for the Fall 2011 International Quilt Market. It takes place in the George R. Brown Convention Center downtown, which occupies about six square blocks. The photo above shows it from my room in the Hilton Hotel that is connected to the Convention Center. 

Today, the main focus was Schoolhouse, a series of short sessions put on by industry people – book publishers, fabric companies, notions manufacturers, fabric designers, etc. There are 30-minute and 15-minute sessions all day. In the morning, you pick up the official program for Market, and decide what sessions you want to attend:

Groups of quilt shop owners huddle in the lobby areas of the Convention Center to confer. If quilt shops come with more than one person, they often split up to cover more ground. 

I attended a session where Alex Anderson showed off her new fabric line, which will ship in January. It is beautiful!

 

 Here is the quilt Alex designed to show off the line:

Some of the sessions were absolutely packed. Sessions where there are good door prizes or giveaways are always popular. Here are just some of the people in the crowd waiting for Lonni Rossi to talk about her new fabric lines for Andover:

Here’s Lonni:

 An assistant carries one of Lonni's quilts through the spectators:

Here’s Lonni:

Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts was completely charming, and shared many personal stories while introducing her new book.

This is just one of Edyta’s gorgeous quilts:

Susan Knapp (of The Quilt Branch) and I always try to meet up and have our photo taken together!

Not enough time to show you everything from today; I'll post more tomorrow!