The International Quilt Market is the most beautiful trade show I attend. It is so visually stimulating with all the wonderful colors of fabrics, quilts and all the related products. I just returned from the fall trade show in Houston and want to share my thoughts, experiences and photos with you. I must warn you, I used my new iPhone camera and loved it so much, I kept snapping away so I have tons of photos to share with you and will divide them into multi posts.
After arriving on Friday, the first event I attended was a mixer that night, Fabric 2.0, organized by Caroline Devoy of J. Caroline Creative (and sponsored by CHA, Stashbooks, Michael Miller Fabrics, Modkid, JCaroline Creative, and Andover Fabrics). As you can see, it was well attended (and fun).
I just love colorful furniture and fell in love with this sewing machine cabinet in bright green by Arrow Sewing Cabinets. This will really brighten a sewing room or studio and make sewing and quilting even more fun. The chair cushion raises up for a storage area underneath it. And we all know that there’s no such thing as too much storage. This one also comes in white and the chair comes in bright pink and oak.
Wooly Lady has the most gorgeous artisan wool fabrics, dyed one yard at a time with painterly colors. They also carry fabulous kits for wool applique and rug hooking with contemporary to classic and elegant to whimsical designs.
Please check out Wooly Lady’s website for their line of kits, they are just beautiful to look through.
Quilting Treasures‘ booth was filled with new wonderful fabrics. J Wecker Frisch, a very talented artist, has both a Halloween and a Christmas collection. I love her snowmen chefs below in her Baker’s Dozen collection. They are so warm and inviting with Christmas cheer!
Her Halloween fabric collection, Creepers Peepers is beautiful and has a wonderful vintage appeal.
Debra Jordan Bryan has a new Christmas fabric for Quilting Treasures as well, Let It Snow, created in her wonderful whimsy style. The blue color really pops with this fabric. All of these holiday fabrics will be out next year in plenty of time for sewing and quilting.
Clover Needlecraft, Inc. had a demo in their booth of their needle felting tools using wool roving. This is one technique I haven’t tried yet, due only to my time constraints. I love wool felting and have it high on my to do list. Look at the felted items behind the demo on the booth wall – bags, butterfly and hats! They were gorgeous! Clover also had some new Wonder Clips to clip and hold or clip and sew that you can see on their website.
I have been a Kaffe Fassett fan for years and have a collection of his books. I started with his beauitful needlepoint books and have continued with his quilt books. His booth is an explosion of the beautiful, wonderful colors of his fabrics for Westminster Fabrics. Check out the chair!
Below, Kaffe is sewing on a quilt with his new book on the table in front of him.
I love buttons and know a lot of you do too. I don’t know what it is about buttons, but you can’t have too many! I have big jars, small jars, tins, and drawers of buttons, some vintage and some new, and keep buying more. And I bought more at Market. So you can see why I visited Dusty’s Vintage booth. There were sooooooo many buttons, and these pictures just show a small part of the buttons they have.
The Ogier Trading Company booth was beautiful with all the hand-dyed yarns for needle arts, embellishments and doll hair. The yarn assortments consists of wool, alpaca, cotton, mohair and silk fibers.
Pearl Louise, of Pearl Louise Designs, is a delightful person as well as talented designer of patterns and fabrics (Troy fabrics). I always enjoy visiting with her at Market and seeing her latest designs. Below, Pearl is standing in front of her newest Block of the Month Quilt featuring her fabrics. Pearl is known for her delightful block of the month quilt patterns.
Leilani Arts, has exotic yarns, fibers, textiles and beads. You can see how luscious their silks are. I love the vest of woven silk strips and can visualize the strips used for quilts as well.
Suzanne McNeill of Design Originals (Fox Chapel Publishing) was showing how easy it is to sew Zentangle type designs for quilts with the new book “Zen-Sational, Stitches for Quilting”. Although it looks like it would be hard to sew Zentangles, Suzanne showed how easy it really is. Really easy! I love drawing with the Zentangle technique and can’t wait to try it for sewing.
Meg Hannan’s Fabric Jewels creates the most amazing and beautiful fabric jewelry in her Rag Sky Art Studio. Yes, the jewelry is really made from fabric with beads and other embellishments. She uses a special technique to make this unique jewelry. You can see more of her jewelry as well as galleries that carry her art jewelry on her website – its a beautiful site so check it out. And congratulations on Meg for celebrating 25 years of Fabric Jewels!
I hope you’ve enjoyed my view of Quilt Market so far. I still have lots more to show you from market as well as photos from the quilt exhibits. Walking the quilt exhibits is like walking an art museum as they are really works of art. Please check back.
Phyllis
