30 Oct Quilt Market wrap-up

Well, Quilt Market is a wrap for another season!  It always takes a while to recover afterward.  Market is a lot of fun, but also a lot of work.

I flew in Thursday and arrived around lunch time.  A quick shuttle to the hotel and I was off to Ikea to get a shelving unit for my booth.  I took a cab there and Uber back.  I’m definitely an Uber convert as it was much less expensive.  It was a bit of a challenge getting the shelving unit into the convention center as there is construction EVERYWHERE in Houston.  They will be hosting the SuperBowl in 2017 and there is a lot of building going on.  I dropped the shelving unit in the booth and walked back to the hotel to pick up the box full of patterns I had shipped from home.  Rossie arrived later in the afternoon to help me hang the drapes and quilts.  This is definitely a two-person job and I so appreciated Rossie’s help!  Having made some pretty good progress, we went off to have drinks and dinner with some other quilty friends.

Friday I took a class about developing lesson plans for classes.  After that, I fit in a bit more work on the booth and went to several Schoolhouse sessions.  Schoolhouse is an all day event, broken up into many half-hour sessions – there are about 12-15 presentations each session.  It can be hard to decide which one to attend!  Presentations focus on introducing new techniques and products to Market attendees – mostly quilt shop owners.  I went to some interesting presentations on new books, mystery quilts and social media.  Then I finalized the booth and went to a networking event.  I grabbed a tasty wrap sandwich on the way back to the hotel and called it a day!  At previous Markets, I have often attended Sample Spree, which is a crazy event with lots of vendors and people trying to find their newest fabric crush before anyone else buys them all.  I skipped it this year, but maybe next time.

Saturday was the opening day of Quilt Market itself.  It is such fun to talk with shop owners and learn about their shops and where they are from.  I ran a drawing for a Kindle Fire in my booth so that added an element of fun.  Saturday evening included a fantastic class by the multi-talented Cheryl Sleboda on social media, a quick bite of “dinner” and then the Modern Quilt Guild meet-up.

After a day in the booth on Sunday, my roomie, Trudi Wood, and I thought we’d have a bite to eat and call it an early night.  Unfortunately, the Quilt Market crowds and the pouring rain caused a very long wait for a table and we didn’t get back to our room until 10 pm.  The food at Mia Bella Trattoria was fantastic despite the long wait.

Monday is the final day of Quilt Market and often a bit quieter.  Quilt Market closes earlier and then it is time to tear down the booths.  Sometimes it seems like they’ve hardly been up and other times it seems like three days ago was last month 🙂  I had a very tasty tapas dinner with some of the crew from Pink Castle Fabrics and headed back to the hotel.  My shuttle to the airport picked me up at 7:15 am and I finally arrived home late that afternoon.

I didn’t really get out of my booth this time to look around, but I still have lots of notes to go through and things to organize.  Good thing November is usually a fairly quiet month!  Though I’m really looking forward to sharing my lecture with the Cal-Co Quilters Guild on Monday, November 9.

We’ll chat again soon!

PS Sorry about the GIANT and tiny pictures – I still haven’t had time to quite figure out how WordPress sizes pictures – I’ll get there, I promise!