2010 Fall Quilt Market, Part 4

Okay, this is probably my most fun experience at this year’s Fall Quilt Market: I walked into Julie Creus’ booth for her company, La Todera. We chatted for a bit, and then she got a phone call. I was looking around at all her cool stuff, and when she got off, she said, “Oh my gosh, I just found out that Kaffe Fassett and Liza Prior Lucy are coming to my booth right now!” She asked if I’d take photos, and I agreed. Sure enough, a few minutes later, here come Kaffe and Lucy. (If you don’t know them, Kaffe is a very famous artist, well known in the quilting world for his luscious floral fabrics. Liza often partners with him, and designs many beautiful quilts with his fabrics.) I clicked away, both on my camera and on Julie’s, and got a bunch of photos of them admiring her work, including the one above.

Julie makes many of her flower pins with Kaffe’s fabrics, and gave him one to take home. She said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I named my pattern Kafflowers after you, because they look great in your fabrics!” He didn’t mind at all. Julie is holding two cute little mushrooms made from her “Plushroom Pincushion Kit” (it retails for $12, and comes with all the fabrics you need to make the big and little ’shrooms).

This was Julie’s very first Quilt Market. I enjoyed talking with her about her experience, because I’m considering the possibility of trying it next year myself. Her booth showed off her products in a very fresh, whimsical way, without a big expense. Isn’t her use of the parasols hanging overhead wonderful?

You can purchase one of Julie’s flower brooches on her Etsy shop.

This is Julie’s friend, Margaret Travis of Eazy Peazy Quilts. She designs fun handbags and purse accessories, and her latest line is designed for use with wheelchairs and walkers. Check out the stylish rhinestone-embellished walker in her display!

Julie and Margaret came together to Quilt Market, and arranged to have their booths side by side so that they could help each other out. Isn’t that smart?

Joanne Figueroa of Fig Tree & Co. designs fabric for Moda, nearly all with her signature buttercream color as a base. Her booth is always just lovely. You can see more photos of it on her blog and see her kits, books and patterns here.

Pat Sloan gives an autographed copy of her book to a lucky recipient.

From time to time while I was strolling the aisles, I came upon sights like this one (above) where an author was signing copies of her (or his) book. If you get there early enough, and get in line, you can get a book, while supplies last. Sometimes the sponsoring company (usually the publisher or a big distributor like Brewer or Checkers) gives you a ticket when you get in line, and that means you are going to get a copy. They hand out as many tickets as they have books stacked up next to the author.

Pat Sloan was signing copies of Appliqué a Garden, which includes seven projects.

She gave me a sneak peek at her new book, Redwork With a Twist, which will be out in December!

This is Moneca Shelhoup of Dora’s Daughter’s Designs. Her tagline is “All that I am and ever dreamed of being, my mother encouraged me to be.” Doesn’t that make you want to cry, it’s so sweet? I loved their crazy cute patterns for crowns (like the one she’s wearing), hats, an owl purse, and contemporary needlepunch embroidery. (Some of these patterns are so new that they are not on the website yet.)

Fabric companies have the biggest spaces at market, sometimes taking up nearly half an aisle! They are often very elaborately decorated in a theme. Some have entire bolts of the new fabrics available for shop owners to examine. Here’s part of Alexander Henry’s display. 

elinor peace bailey

And now I think it’s time for another giveaway! How about a copy of the brand new book by elinor peace bailey (yes, she prefers lower case), Patti Medaris Culea and Barbara Willis? It’s autographed by elinor!

Elinor describes herself as an “entertainer, educator and entrepreneur.” She is perhaps best known for her exquisite dolls, and for her wonderfully wild appearance. When I landed at the Houston airport last week, I spotted her in a shop wearing her signature art clothing and bright pink hair, and told her, “I know I’m in Houston now!”

Cloth Doll Workshop is a collaboration by all three authors, and features several doll designs from each of them. It includes very detailed instructions, plus a look at their studios. But I think the best part is the marvelous gallery section in the back, with their work and the work of many other talented doll makers and students.

GIVEAWAY! Win a copy of Cloth Doll Workshop by leaving a comment on this post before noon EST on Wednesday, November 10. Tell me if you’ve ever considered dyeing your hair an unusual color, and if so, why and which color.

I’m going to keep giving away Quilt Market loot in my next few posts, so please come back for a chance to win! 

WE HAVE A WINNER! Karen in Tucson won Cloth Doll Workshop.

2010 Quilt Market, Part 3

Pokey Bolton with the 2010 International Quilt Festival: Quilt Scene magazine.

Well, Quilt Market is officially over, and in the Houston Convention Center all the vendors are taking down their booths, and some are setting up again for International Quilt Festival. But I’m still playing catch-up! I have lots more photos and news to share from Quilt Market. If you are headed to Houston for Festival, make sure you pick up a copy of the 2010 International Quilt Festival: Quilt Scene magazine. You can get a copy in the Quilting Arts booth (or online, if you can’t get to Houston).

Quilting Arts’ booth at Market

There are lots more goodies in their booth, including my newest DVD, ”Master Machine Stitching: Thread Sketching Beyond the Basics.”

You can also see my candy corn piece (above left), which will be in the 2011 Quilting Arts Calendar. 

Scott Murkin’s “Stars Over Texas” is the 2010 IQA raffle quilt.

This year’s International Quilt Association Raffle Quilt is made by North Carolina’s own Scott Murkin, a fabulous quilter and quilt show judge. It is 80" x 80", and you can purchase tickets for a chance to win it at Quilt Festival.

Sheree Schattenmann of Sheree’s Alchemy Designs

Sheree Schattenmann is owner of  Sheree’s Alchemy Designs. She carries a great selection of fabrics at her online store, including organic cottons and out-of-print, rare, and hard-to-find prints from designers such as Amy Butler, Heather Bailey, Anna Maria Horner, Denyse Schmidt, and Kaffe Fassett. She has a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry, but wanted to be at home with her children, so she started her store, and has just launched a darling new line of patterns and clothing designs. Major cuteness! You can read her blog here. 

Here’s a shot of the floor of the Convention center.  There are a gazillion booths. Twenty three rows, with an average of 50 booths on each row (although some companies like the fabric corporations, have many booth spaces). You do the math. Did you know that according to a 2010 survey, quilting is a $3.6 billion industry in the United States? Wow.

This is my friend Vickie Clontz of Annie’s Keepsakes. I love her green, earthy style. Her booth was a serene oasis in the hustle-bustle on the show floor, although the quilt shop owners were keeping her hopping placing new orders!

This is part of the area where Moda sales reps meet with quilt shop owners placing their fabric orders. The new collections are shown on the wall displays.

Me with “The Art of Quilts Postcard Collection: Nature”

I was excited to see that they were taking pre-orders for “The Art of Quilts Postcard Collection: Nature” at the C&T Publishing booth. I have two pieces featured in this product, and one — the purple orchid — is on the cover! It will come out in early December, and should be a great gift item. It includes 30 high-quality images that can be mailed as postcards or framed, and will retail for $9.95. 

Anna Maria Horner

I’ve admired Anna Maria Horner’s fabric, her patterns, her books, and her blog for a long time, and it was nice to finally meet her. And I can report that she is just as nice, as smart, and as interesting as I thought she’d be! Her new line is called “An Innocent Crush.”

Melissa Averinos

I met Melissa Averinos two years ago at Fall Quilt Market and have been following her career as a fabric designer, an artist, a shop owner, and a blogger since then. Melissa’s Schoolhouse session at Quilt Market was so fun, because she was very anxious about public speaking, and perfectly honest about it with the huge crowd that turned out to hear her talk about her brand new fabric line for Andover called “Swoon.” She is such a kind, authentic soul.


You can read her blog here, and see the cool stuff in her shop (Yummy Goods) here, see Swoon here, and find out about her new book (“Small Stash Sewing”) here. 


Swoon!

Alicia Salazar with a finished flower

This is Alicia Salazar with a beautiful flower made from the very clever “Flower Frill Templates” by Clover. I think this will be a hot product this year. It is brand spanking new; I can’t even find it on their website yet!

You can use any “crisp” fabric (batiks work great). Alicia demonstrated how you use the templates (four sizes come in the pattern) to cut several folded petal shapes (above), and then stitch them together at the base.

 

After that, you fluff up the petals, and voila! A beautiful flower. Pretty cool. 

The flowers above were stitched to a small pillow. 

GIVEAWAY! Win a copy of the Flower Frills Templates (which aren’t even available yet, but Alicia gave me one) by leaving a comment on this post before noon EST on Tuesday, November 9. Tell me what you’ve found most interesting about my Quilt Market posts so far.

I’m going to start giving away Quilt Market loot in my next few posts, so please come back for a chance to win! 

WE HAVE A WINNER! Sandee will receive the Flower Frills Templates!

2010 Quilt Market, Part 2

Bonnie McCaffery

So here is part 2, a bit late because they couldn’t manage to hook me up to the internet at my hotel. (ARGH!) I took a wonderful class in digitized bobbin work from Bonnie McCaffery on Friday morning. Bonnie is a fabulous teacher, and is partly responsible for me becoming an art quilter... I took her "Painted Faces" class in 2005, and it totally changed my life. (Thanks, Bonnie!) If you have not watched any of Bonnie’s VidCasts, make sure you check them out. She features a different quilt artist every month to interview, and it is very inspiring stuff. 

Amy Butler

Amy Butler’s booth was lush and colorful, as usual.

She had made these amazing, huge flowers that topped large floor pillows.

I love the bold florals and strong graphics of Amy’s fabrics.

Bari J

This is Bari J Ackerman with some pieces made from her wonderful Country Lane fabric line.

This is a display of books being released by Stash Books, an imprint of C&T Publishing geared toward hip “fabric arts for a handmade lifestyle.” They are lovely!

Mary Abreu, author of Little Girls, Big Style

Mary Abreu, author of Stash Books title Little Girls, Big Style, was signing books. I got one (!) and if I can bear to part with it, I’ll do a give-away next week, so stay tuned!

Linda Teufel and Noriko Endo

I am so excited to read Noriko Endo’s new book, Confetti Naturescapes. It is just out from Dragon Threads (that’s publisher Linda Teufel with Noriko on the left), and it features many of Noriko’s fabulous landscapes.

2010 Fall Quilt Market, Part I

 

Well, here I am at International Quilt Market in Houston! All the exhibitors — pattern designers, fabric companies, tool manufacturers, distributors, and thread companies are here, and were setting up shop when I took these photos on Thursday afternoon. From the second floor “portholes,” here is the view to the left (above), and the center (below)…

 

And to the right:

 

 Wow! What a lot of craziness there is going on down there on the main floor!

The AURIfil thread booth is looking good:

 

Exhibitors ship their goods in these giant wooden crates:

C&T Publishing employees were trying to get all their titles in the racks in alphabetical order — no small job!

 

All day yesterday, I attended Schoolhouse sessions. Schoolhouse is designed to introduce quilt shop owners to new products, techniques and sales approaches. Every half hour or so, you can choose from about 15 different presentations. My friend Sarah Vedeler did a Schoolhouse session for Accuquilt, maker of small machines that die cut fabric pieces. She is holding up Judy Steenblik’s version of Sarah’s design GO! Be Dazzled. Sarah’s version is in the main exhibition, and won a cash prize! (She doesn’t know exactly what prize yet; the awards ceremony is on Tuesday.)

 

Sarah has brand new sets of dies for the Accuquilt for her designs: 

 

The Accuquilt company rolled out its new, smaller “Go Baby” yesterday, with quilters Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims, hosts of The Quilt Show, a TV show produced for the Internet. The man taking photos for Accuquilt kindly offered to take my photo with them:

Can you tell that Alex is a little excited about her new baby?

 

I love the fabrics and designs of Anna Maria Horner, and am an avid reader of her marvelous blog. I'm going to try to get a photo of her in her booth in the next few days. Here is one of her quilts:

Photo therapy

It’s been one of those weeks. I won’t burden you with the details; suffice it to say that it involves an auto mechanic who made a big mistake, a shop owner who isn’t trying very hard to make things right, and several other events that were emotionally draining.

When things seem overwhelming, it always helps me to do something creative. When I don’t have much time, but I need a fix, photography always fits the bill. I take my digital camera out into the garden or the yard, and focus my energy on finding small bits of beauty around me.

Here’s the lovely jewel I found today: my Nikko Blue hydrangea, which in the spring puts out gorgeous cornflower blue flowers, has managed to sprout a few small blooms before fall arrives in earnest. These blooms, however, are the most spectacular dusky lavender, eggplant and plum colors you can imagine. 

I am trying very hard to melt into those colors, to feel serene. 

“Let your soul

stand cool

and composed

before 

a million

universes.”

— Walt Whitman

 

Headed for Quilt Market

I am about to set sail for International Quilt Market in Houston. This is the world’s biggest trade show for the quilting industry, and all the fabric designers, pattern designers and quilting personalities are there. (Sorry, but it is not open to the general public.) It is the place quilt shop owners go to purchase all the new fabric lines, tools, notions and other goods they want to sell for the next six months. 

I will be presenting a Schoolhouse session for AURIfil thread on Friday. (If you are coming, please come see me in room #362C from 12:25 to 12:55 p.m.)

I’m not able to stick around for International Quilt Festival (November 4-7) this year, but I should get to see a lot of the special exhibitions, because they are set up during Market. I’m taking along my camera and a laptop, and plan to blog each night so I can share all the beautiful quilts I see, the people I meet and new products I discover with you … I’ll also try to score some goodies I can give away here on my blog after I return …  so stay tuned!

MCQG show is this weekend

If you live in the Charlotte area, don’t miss the Mooresville Centerpiece Quilters’ Guild’s quilt show this weekend. I’m going to be at International Quilt Market, and I will miss it (for the first time in years, boo-hoo). This group has some fabulous quilters, and they always put on a great show. 

Dates: Friday and Saturday, October 29-30

Location:  Lake Norman Elementary School, 255 Oak Tree Rd, Mooresville NC, 28117
Hours:  9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Admission:  $5 
Details:  Approximately 150 member quilts, raffle quilt, vendors, gift shop, silent auction of quilts, quilt-related items and antique quilts and quilt tops.  Special displays:  “Catawba River Project,” alphabet blocks, mystery quilts.

Getting “Cooped” ready to hang, and sell

The back of Cooped before adding the sleeve and pocket

I was recently contacted by a woman who loved my piece “Cooped,” which is in the October/November issue of Quilting Arts magazine, and wanted to purchase it. Hoo-ray! We e-mailed back and forth about ways to display it. We considered stitching it to a mat and framing it, with or without glass, or adding a hanging sleeve at the top so it could be hung from a small dowel.

In the end, we settled on an approach that will allow her to hang it either using the dowel-through-the-sleeve approach, or on a wire strung through a piece of foam core that fits into a pocket on the back, keeping the piece nice and taut, and able to be hung on a single nail. Here’s how I constructed it. This is similar to the way some of the members of Fiber Art Options (a Charlotte-area group of fiber artists) finished their pieces for our Orchids: Sensuality Stitched exhibition earlier this year.

The piece is about 11-1/2" wide by 8" long. I used fabric that matched the facing, and cut a piece 12" x 8". On each 12" side (what would become the left and right sides), I folded under and pressed 1/4", then folded under and pressed 1/4" again, and stitched it down to create a finished edge:

I did this on both the left and right sides (so that it was now about 11" wide, slightly narrower than the piece), and then did it on the bottom edge, too. The photo below shows the back side of the sleeve/pocket (the side that will go against the back of the quilt), with the top part with the unfinished edge, folded down about 2", and machine stitched in about 1/4" from the unfinished edge to form the sleeve:

Note: On a larger quilt, I would have created a 4" sleeve at the top, since this is the standard sleeve size for quilt shows. This piece is so small that a 4" sleeve would have covered most of the back, and been rather silly!

Next, I pinned the sleeve/pocket to the back of the piece, with the sleeve at the top. I started hand stitching at one of the sides at the bottom, and stitched the pocket part to the back of the quilt, then knotted, and left a small gap right before the seam for the sleeve (see photo below for details). Then I stitched the back of the sleeve to the back of the quilt, leaving the front part of the sleeve open so a dowel or slat could be placed through it to hang it that way, if desired. 

I folded down the very top edge of the sleeve about 1/4", to leave a little “give” for a rod or slat, in case it ever needed to be hung that way:

… and then stitched across the top of the sleeve, and down the other side in the same way as I described above. 

Next, I measured the pocket, cut a piece of foam core to the correct size (in this case, 11" x 7"), and taped the edges with artist’s tape to make them nice and clean:

I measured the distance from the top of the sleeve to the gap in the stiching where the wire would come through, and then marked this on the foam core (you can see it in the photo above) and made a little hole with a sturdy needle. I cut two pieces of wire about 10" each. On each side, I ran a wire through the hole and wrapped them together for about 1-1/2" next to the hole:

Then I inserted the foam core into the pocket just a bit, fed the wires out of the unstitched part of the pocket, and then pushed the foam core completely into the pocket. Last, I wrapped the two wires together in the middle:

Here is the piece hanging on a single nail on my studio’s red wall:

I think it looks great on my red wall; it picks up the bits of red on the chickens’ heads! It hangs nice and flat against the wall now. I hope its new owner will like it.