Spring 2011 Quilt Market

The caption here should read, "Ready to SHOP!".  My friend took this photo of me at the entrance of the Spring 2011 Quilt Market in the Minneapolis Convention Center.  Quilt Market is held twice each year.  It's in Houston in the fall, and it's held in different cities each Spring.  Attendees are wholesale customers in the quilting industry.  The majority of the shoppers are quilt shop owners- or those who support the industry such as long arm quilters.  Vendors include mostly distributors, fabric manufacturers, pattern designers, book authors, and suppliers of specialty notions.  For the most part, a shopper such as myself doesn't come home with anything, but places orders for product to be shipped in the near future.  That, of course, doesn't explain why I had to go to Target and buy a new duffel bag so I could get things home that I somehow "accumulated" while I was there.  I have no idea how a "few" catalogs and samples filled another whole bag to check on the airplane.

I really enjoyed Minneapolis.  I had never spent any time there before- other than layovers at the airport which really doesn't count.  This photo was taken right outside the convention center.  The whole area has these overhead enclosed walkways connecting the convention center, hotels, parking garages and shopping.  Once you figure out where you are, it's pretty cool.  I was impressed by how clean the city is... at least where I was.

I had dinner with my friend, Sandy Pennington (Quilted Roses) at Britt's Pub.  What a fun place!  We sat outside and did some people watching with a glass of wine and some yummy burgers.  It was a very pleasant evening with a good friend.

Here's a random item that caught my eye. Buttons are attached to the ends of floral stems and they are placed in a vase.  I'm not sure I'll ever take the time to make this, but it just tickled me for some reason.

I met a lot of designers.  This is me with Marilyn Foreman.  Marilyn is the designer for Quilt Moments.  I carry most of her patterns and have Celebration as a kit.  I love the way she writes patterns.  She has you make blocks from the inside out, and square them up as you go.  I find that I do very accurate work when I follow her patterns.  Marilyn is a very nice lady and it was fun to meet her.  It was also fun to see the quilts in person that I had only seen on patter covers before.  They ALWAYS look better in person!

I have more pictures of quilts and designers...... I'll post more tomorrow.