Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Market

I have to say that the combination of joy, exhaustion, creativity and adrenalin of attending International Quilt Market has me wishing I was facing a three day weekend instead of a full work week, but I wouldn't want to miss it for the world.


Four full days of teaching, demonstrating, walking the floor, and placing orders, combine with drinks and dinners with other shop owners and vendors that feel more like family is more fun than work, but exhausting just the same.





Debby and I have fun no matter where we go. Sometimes I am pretty sure that we are the only two people that find the situation funny, but that doesn't deter us from having a good time. For example, Ty Pennington was at Quilt Market. He is offering a new fabric line called Impressions and you could stop by this booth to meet him. During set-up time, when the walls of the booth had to be screwed together, Ty was nowhere to be found. There were a few girls and a cordless drill manhandling things into place. Where is that DIY guy when you need him?




Talk about fun.....


The Swirly Girls pattern company has designed a new block of the month program for Michael Miller fabrics. MM was gracious enough to invite us to a beautiful breakfast so that Susan, from Swirly Girls could explain the program to us. Deb loved it immediately, but I was a bit more cautious. I know what it is like to be in over your head, making promises that you only hope you can keep for the next 12 months. I usually prefer to be in charge of my own destiny, so I decided to think about it. By our last day at Market neither of us had seen anything that we liked better than the new Clubhouse program, so we stopped by to give it another look. I then realized that if you bought the program, Swirly Girls (also girls that know how to have fun) allowed one person from your party to be entered into their glass wind tunnel. You had the opportunity to "grab" as much Swirly Girl cash as possible in 30 seconds.



That made the decision.



We were definitely doing the program.



Guess who was going in the booth














Deb secured enough cash to
win two charm packs of the
same fabrics that are used in the block of the month.

I guess she will still be buying lottery tickets if she really wants to strike it rich.

Deb's quote "That isn't as easy as it looks!"

Luckily the quilt is beautiful and you can look forward to making it starting just after the first of the year.



Wind tunnel not included.





2 comments:

Anonymous said...

yeah...like Ty REALLY designed that fabric. Boy, they let ANYONE design fabric these days ;-)

Mama Pea said...

Looks like so much fun. I have no doubt it's incredibly exhausting. Ever year I go to a conference over Memorial Day weekend. It starts on Sat and is over on Tues at noon. I am always so pumped, there is so much to do beforehand (I'm usually presenting, conducting business meetings, my students are presenting, seeing old friends and colleagues, meeting new people, there's some partying...). When I come home, I just want to sleep for a week! I'm sure it's much the same going to these events!