Today's Question:

"Who is this good looking guy and why does he want to be my friend?"

Not that I am opposed to having great looking Italian men find me fascinating, but honestly, why would this guy want to be friends with a 50+ year old married quilt shop owner? Months ago when I joined Facebook for the lone reason that I wanted to sign-up for Sandy Brawner's "I bet I can find 1,000,000 people that love quilting" page I was introduced to a whole new world of technology.

For those of you without Facebook pages (if you have lots of time to waste on the computer) I suggest that you give it a try. It is fascinating what pops up! Once you fill in the harmless (I hope) part of your profile, it immediately starts suggesting "friends". People that you went to school with, people that you have common interests with, people, people and more people. As you accumulate "friends" it suggests more with the added bonus of telling you how many friends you and this new person have in common.

From day one this good looking Italian guy was on my list. We have several friends in common. Who the heck is he? His photo certainly stood out among my quilter friends and family! The thing about Facebook is that you can't see someones profile unless both of you agree to be friends. I didn't want to ask this guy to be my friend just to figure out who he was - I've read about Internet stalking! (at this point both of my daughters will laugh out loud and exclaim "Yea right Mom - you wish!!!)

Early today I received a friend request from him!

"Karen, Alex....here today, Karen I see we have 24 mutual friends, I will be very happy to have you on my friends list too. Alex.".

It took about 2 seconds for me to click on that link and see who this guy is!

Reading his profile explained everything. Alex is part of the Italian sales team for Aurifil Thread. We love that thread so much that I purchased a huge floor rack of it at Quilt Market. So much for my summer of Italian intrigue, but to be honest, at this point in my life I would rather have a fling with a really great thread. Alex and I are going to be really good friends.

The Hot New Thing!

As if by magic the convention center goes from a huge empty hall to this!

If you walk down the blue carpet starting at the lower left corner of the photo and make a left at the second corner you would be in our booth. If you made a right, you would be in the Timeless Treasures booth. Keep in mind that this photo only shows a portion of the sales floor!

At every Quilt Market there is always a buzz on the convention floor that starts sometime after lunch on the first day. Shop owners that are struggling to cover 26 aisles of merchandise start talking or asking each other about "the hot new thing". It can be anything from a new notion to a special buy on fabric to a technique that has been reinvented in a way that will inspire customers. There always seems to be something that everyone is talking about and there is no real way to predict what it might be.

We had an amazing first day in our booth. Standard procedure for shop owners is to walk the floor on day one without buying anything. Then after they have seen everything they formulate a plan and start to shop. At least that is the plan. I know it never works for us! Sometime on day one we begin to realize that if we want it, we want it. There is no reason to come back, we just get it when we see it. Many shop owners seem to feel the same way. Our pattern sales on day one far exceeded our expectations and people started to show up at the booth telling us that someone had sent them to check us out. Let the buzz begin!

By the end of day one, Debby looked at me and said "I think WE are the hot new thing!" and I think she was right! This was the first Market that we offered our full line of Button Pillow Patterns to the rest of the world. We sell tons of them here in the shop and we wholesale them on a very low key basis. We know they are wonderful, but it was very gratifying to find out that the rest of the world thinks so too! The small size, easy to accomplish patterns and the opportunity to try a little something new on a small project has a lot to do with their appeal. The thing that pushes them over the top is that we include all of the embellishments right inside the pattern. Buttons, beads, ribbon, whatever you need, it comes packed in the pattern. All for just $10 retail. The only thing you add is fabric!

We have 11 pillows in the series. If you want to check them out, you can see them all under the Button Pillow tab on our website at http://www.thequiltcompany.com/ .

By the end of day two we had spoken to a magazine editor that ask me to design a pillow just for them. Several Media writers had stopped by to see what all the talk was about and Timeless informed me that they were going to have to air in additional fabric to handle the demand.

WHOOPEE!!!!

Please don't be concerned that all this popularity will go to my head. The world has a way of keeping me grounded. For example: Bernie, Debby and I stopped by the Quilts Inc Education Office to check on the location of my lecture. The Director of Education took one look at Bernie and said "I was in your store yesterday". Bernie, my friend from Florida replied "No, you were in Karen's store" and pointed to me. I had greeted this woman when she walked in the door. She looked me head to toe and said, "No, if you were there I don't remember you". Proving that I have no need for dark glasses.

Day three is always a slow day on the Market floor. People start to head home. It is the perfect time for buyers to visit and negotiate with vendors. It is also a great time to catch up with old friends in the industry. It was also the first time that Debby and I had a chance to sit and place fabric orders. I also snuck out to lunch with the other members of the My Quilt Village so that we could plan the next several months. There are going to be some interesting changes and some great offerings. Keep an eye on this blog for announcements.

Now that all the whoopla is over we are doing our best to catch up on our sleep and get back to the normal level of chaos around here. We have tons of orders to ship. I have lots of designing to do. I just booked my flight to New York to plan for October. Another week or two and we start this craziness all over again!

To be honest, I wouldn't have it any other way!

Karen

More on Market

Friday morning is the first day that the Market floor is open. Vendors are ready. The convention floor has gone from a vast empty space to booth after booth of amazing merchandise. Quilt Market has to be one of the most colorful places on earth! On the first morning of the show you can feel the excitement and anticipation of everyone involved, but the floor does not open until 9:30.

To fill the early morning hours Quilts Inc. offers educational lectures and classes. I was asked to give a one hour talk on buying. It was both an honor and a humbling experience to be singled out by the powers that run Market to give this talk. Anyone that knows me is well aware that talking for an hour on almost any subject is not a problem for me. But this invitation was extended by Marti Michelle and she specifically asked that I speak on the topic of "how to buy". I will admit that I am a successful shop owner, but I also have a degree in ART, not FINANCE. Preparing for the talk was a bit intimidating. Not normally one to use notes, I prepared an outline - color coded of course, with 4 key points. I printed it out in large type (so that I could see it without my glasses) on 8 separate pages. All I had to do was run through it early in the morning and I would be set and ready to go.

A little secret: I put my lecture notes inside a magazine for safe keeping and you guessed it, during the chaos of set-up we lost the magazine! Luckily I had left a second copy of the outline at home and as I was doing my best to control my panic Thursday evening with a lemon drop martini my husband got out of bed and saved the day by faxing the pages to the hotel. Whew!

We had a few minutes before getting to work in our booth to run over to the Henry Glass booth and take photos of Bernie's cupcake quilt made from her new fabric line. They had these adorable matching chair covers made too!

We had a very busy day in the booth, but I had to leave my very capable staff in charge to run home. Friday evening was Lindsay's senior prom. They had a perfect evening for the event. Thank heaven Market was in town and I didn't have to miss any of the fun! My daughter is the one in the middle!

Tomorrow I will tell you about the "hot new thing"!

Can you spell exhaustion?

Market is finally over and I am exhausted.

I think that everyone that was here for the convention has left town. We had a few shop owners visit the store today and I put my best friend and fellow fabric designer Bernie, on a plane back to Florida this afternoon. Slowly but surely we are getting back to normal. There is far too much to try to tell you about in just one post, so here is an overview of just the first two days.

It has been a week like no other. I had intended to snap photos throughout the week to share with you. I even got off to a good start by taking these shots of our store on Wednesday morning as we did the last minute prep before the visitors and the bus load of shop owners arrived.

I don't know what I was thinking. Once the front door opened and visitors started streaming in, there was absolutely no time to take photos!

We were very excited that everyone from magazine editors and publishers to owners of our favorite shops across the country to Moda designers and international visitors from Brazil, England, New Zealand, Ireland and everywhere in between stopped by to say hello.

Once we closed the shop at 5pm it was time to hit the convention center floor and start setting up our booth. My most wonderful husband and best friend Bernie had already schleped an over stuffed van of furniture, carpet, drape and merchandise to our space. We just had to get it organized and make our 10" by 20" home for the next 3 days say "wow" and stand out against the competition.

Getting noticed in the convention center isn't as easy as you might think. Here is a glimps of just half of the convention floor on set-up day. Imagine 3 full football fields of nothing but quilting products, fabrics, patterns, books, notions. When you are a pattern designer, that is pretty humbling competition!

Thursday is not only the second day of set-up, it is also Schoolhouse and Sample Spree day. We are in the booth getting things ready by 8 A.M. Classes run from 10am to 6pm and Sample Spree is from 8pm until 10pm. It is a LONG day

I always try to take time out to hear my favorite speakers and friends give their presentations. This is Deb Welsh from Quilting Possibilities talking about the class program that she created.

My presentations were a bit later in the day. Here is what it look like from the podium as people stream into the room to hear me speak.

After class it is back to the booth to hang the quilts and schlep the Sample Spree merchandise to our table location. Sample Spree is difficult to describe. Photos don't do it justice. Without the sound of stampeeding quilters headed for the Moda booth you don't get the full effect!

Once the bedlam was over we went to the hotel, had a well deserved lemon drop martini and went to bed! We needed a good nights sleep. Friday I had an 8 am lecture to give and the Market floor opened at 9:30.

It's Here!

My fabric packet arrived late Thursday afternoon, just as Debby and I were getting ready to leave for a charity fundraiser. I had to wait until early Friday morning to really get down to work. I've been known to work non-stop to do what has to be done when things get down to the wire, but this time things are a little different.

In addition to dealing with normal Market frenzy, this season International Quilt Market is being held here in Pittsburgh. The entire industry is coming to town for this wholesale event. Many of them, including the sponsored bus trip, will be stopping by my store. Needless to say, there is a lot of primping, cleaning and general organizing to prepare for that kind of company. If you were in the store over the weekend, you are probably wondering how that is going to happen! I have piles and heaps of fabric, snips, scraps, discarded blocks, instruction notes, rulers, you name it, strewn everywhere!

Outside of the store we have been working with our landscaper since last fall, planning when he needs to be finished with spring clean-up and fresh mulch. My husband also asked him to re-rock a drainage area along our driveway. All last week there was a pile of stone in my parking lot taking up 3 parking spaces. Our landscaper is having employee issues, his wife just had a baby..... I can relate..... but I wanted the rock gone and the mulch DONE. So far I'm one for two in that department.

I didn't sew until the wee hours on Friday and Saturday because we were attending the local high school musical production of "Anything Goes". My daughter is starring as Hope and I did not want to miss a minute of it. I always see it at least twice, the first time I usually hold my breath each time she starts to sing, the second time I really get to enjoy it. This year they are performing for two weekends and I plan to see it Friday too! Saturday I will leave at intermission so that I can get home and warm things up. For the last few years we have hosted the cast party after the final performance.

This is Lindsay's senior year and in addition to all of the hoopla that normally goes along with graduation, her prom is the Friday night of Market. Sometime between now and then I have to find time to adjust her prom dress. She selected a black and white (mostly white) chiffon dress with a slit and she is not leaving the house until I line the skirt! This morning she informed us that her group of friends are planning to take photos at OUR house.

I have to go drop this quilt at the quilter and call a guy about mulch!

Food Supply

My fabric hasn't arrived yet, so instead of whining about it, I thought I would tackle another important issue. Someone has been messing with my food supply. Not the food supply to our nation, just one small area that I personally concern with myself, namely M&M’s.

I am a hard core M&M addict. Some people think mash potatoes are comfort food, others crave meatloaf or fried chicken. My personal preference is M&M’s. When I am under stress there is nothing like a giant bag of candy coated chocolates to get me through to a deadline.

I have to admit that I am an old school M&M connoisseur; I preferred the color mix before the blue ones were added. That tan, brown, orange, yellow, green and red combo was a classic. If someone had shown you paint chips of those same shades, you would have immediately thought M&M’s. It was recognition that only happens in an advertising persons dreams – until they messed with perfection. I understand the need for change, I can accept the fact that blue had been slighted for years, but why did they have to select THAT shade of blue? It is just not a preferred color for food unless you are under the age of 5. Therefore I eat them first.

The color of my favorite food is not the main concern of this rant. As you all know, -I’m going a little crazy as I wait for the sample fabric of my new fabric line to arrive. (Update: The ETA for fabric is Friday or possibly Monday, but probably not later than end of day Tuesday. They faxed me a shipping notice that it left the print plant yesterday, keep your fingers crossed!) Once it gets here I literally have to sew like a crazy person to get the quilts finished for Market. As a bit of pre-frenzy planning I invested in an extra large bag of my favorite treat. I opened it, dug in and noticed something very strange….

Not all of my precious M’s are perfect.

A large portion of the yellow ones are disfigured. Many of the yellow, green and orange ones have shell damage. A good many brown ones are underdeveloped. It looks like all of those #$%^ blue ones are perfect. I’m thinking communist plot. The M&M factory needs a government bailout NOW. Their factory workers need to be retrained! Quality control has gone out the window! How in the world do we expect to solve the credit crisis and jumpstart the economy when we can’t even get M&M’s right?

For the love of God, someone needs to tell Mars Inc. to stop imposing personalities and putting arms and legs on food and get back to the basics! The next time I open a bag I expect each and every one of those orbs of candy coated chocolates to be exactly the same shape. Make America proud.

Volunteers

I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.

Today was Community Service Day at The Quilt Company. We have agreed to contribute 50 quilts to the Bethlehem Haven House to distribute to the women to whom they provide services. Fifty finished quilts between now and October, I'm thinking we must be nuts. This is a sizable project (even for us) but we feel very strongly that an important part of our business is to provide opportunities for local quilters to give back to the community. We tackle some sort of charitable project every three months and these quilts are the project that we have selected for the next several months. Now we had to get organized.

I have been accused of being a control freak. I prefer to think of it more as having uncompromised standards. I am willing to admit that we sometimes don’t play well with others. I am an extreemly busy business person. I have very low tollarance for comittee work, especially committees that can't make quick decisions. When the Directors of Haven House ask for 100 quilts, we offered to provide 50 if we could do it “our” way. “Our way” means that I control the quality of the fabrics, the workmanship, the patterns and the finishing of the projects. I also feel very strongly that I don’t ever want to give away a quilt that I would not want to keep for myself.

We advertised that we needed help between 10:00 and 3:00 today to cut as many kits as possible for the donation quilts. The plan was to cut quilt kits from our HUGE overflowing scrap basket. Haven House is hosting their major fundraiser next week and they would like us to bring fabric blocks for all 350 attendees to sign and write messages of hope. Those signature blocks will then be inserted into the quilts. Our group of volunteers selected and sorted fabrics from the scrap basket then used our AccuQuilt cutting machine to cut squares and triangles and rectangles into individual quilt kits. Each kit will be given 1, 2, 3 or more signature blocks of the appropriate color and size to be inserted into the patchwork pattern.

As you can see, we had a wonderful turnout of sewers, pressers, sorters, cutters and even cleaner uppers! By the end of the day we had coordinated, cut, pressed and packed a total of 41 quilt tops in assorted patterns! AMAZING!!! What I found even more amazing is that with 41 quilt tops removed; our scrap basket STILL looks like THIS!

Next week we will have the blocks signed and insert them back into the appropriate kits. Then we will set up sewing days here in the store and ask volunteers to help us put them together. Those people that don’t want to sew here at the shop will be able to sign-out a quilt top and take it home to assemble it.

At 8:00 am this morning I couldn’t help wondering what kind of mess I had gotten myself into this time. Now less than 12 hours later, with such wonderful volunteers, I’m thinking “50 quilts, no problem”!

Karen

P.S. No fabric yet.................