Quilt Market is where the industry comes to get inspired. Even though it's a wholesale show and only members of the industry with credentials as buyers (your favorite local quilt shop owner), designers (like me!) or manufactures (like the fabric companies) can attend. My publisher, The Taunton Press, hosted a book signing of the first two ScrapTherapy titles on Saturday afternoon. Even though the new book (ScrapTherapy, The Versatile Nine Patch) isn't ready until April, folks were anxious for their own personalized copy of one of the first two books, ScrapTherapy, Cut the Scraps, or Scrap Therapy, Scraps Plus One. Here I am at the booth book-signing.
Alexia Abegg's (Green Bee Sewing Patterns) new fabric line from Cotton + Steel is called Flower Shop. The big brown paper flowers in her booth were so creative and pretty.
It's always nice to see Carolyn Friedlander at the show. Love that quilt on the wall behind her. Carolyn also has a special exhibit in the quilt show in Houston (just next door to the vendor exhibits in the convention center).
A few of the displays featured elaborate apparel. This gown had butterflies that seemed to be escaping from the folds of the dress in an fantasy-like train. I'm sorry to say that I happened to snap this picture in a rush past the booth, and missed the name of the booth sponsor.
Camelot Fabrics converted bolts of fabric in shades of sea foam green into a woman's dress form for its display.
When you are an exhibitor at the show, it's so hard to steal away time to see the quilt show next door. When you're more of a 'free agent' like I was this time, it's a bit easier to carve out some quiet time to take in some quilty inspiration.
On a side note, Row By Row Experience™ revealed its theme for 2017 - Row by Row On the Go! Couldn't help make the connection to this quilt, Trixelated Transportation by Dionne Matthies-Buban and Martha Peterson, made entirely from equilateral triangles.
Here's a close up of some of the piecing.
Don't look now, but this quilt, A Long Way From Home by Amy Pabst, is made entirely from log cabin blocks. I wish I had something in the foreground to show the scale. The blocks are tiny, making the pieces (over 3,000 of them) within the blocks even tinier.
Take some old linens, save the best bits, and embellish. Just wow. Second Chances by Rhonda Dort
A closer look . . .
Speaking of hexagons, my room-mate for my stay in Houston was none other than Katja Marek. She's about to launch her next online hexagon sew-along using patterns from her recently released calendar. You can sign up for notifications at her shop site, if you're interested. I got tattoo-ed at the show, but didn't get to photograph it until I got home. Peaches from her perch above and behind (red arrow) was not impressed! The 2017 hexi sew-along quilt debuted at Market, and, unlike Peach, I was VERY impressed! Shall I start another project? We'll see!
It was a great trip! I made some great quilty connections and planted a few quilty seeds. We'll see what takes in the next few months, in the meantime, back to stitching!
Happy Stitching!
Joan Ford
Thanks for the shout out and pics of my work! Second Chances will now travel to both St. Louis and the IQA special exhibit at the Chicago Festival. Houston hung it in a WONDERFUL spot! The lighting was perfect!
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome! The quilt is quite stunning, but even more so when you take the chance to have a really close look at all the stitching! Congratulations on having the quilt shown in such a significant show!
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