To Market . . . To Market

Yay!  Friday was Schoolhouse at the Houston Quilt Market.  Donna from DonnasLavenderNest and I headed out early to the George R. Brown Convention Center.  Since we live here, it's super convenient.  We gathered lots of information and there was lots of laughter.  Can you say "Tula Pink"?  That girl is funny!!  And so, so nice.  Her fabrics, etc. are beautiful.

There were lots of freebies, and really that's why I go.  Maybe my agenda will change when I'm a serious marketeer!  But for now, I'm all about the goodies.  (Pics to come later.)

Actually, I was on an information mission and in my quest to figure out how to buy fabric, labels, specialized zippers, etc., I met a man whose company prints fabric.  I was super excited and I can't wait to design my fabric and have it printed.  Almost all conversations had the sentence "what's your minimum order?" in there somewhere.  And therein lies the rub.  In this business, it's go big or go home.  A 2-color cotton printing is only $4.50/yard, but the catch is the minimum order is $750; 3-color is $1,200.  That's a boatload of fabric, my friends.

So after Schoolhouse on Friday, Donna and I headed over to Pappasito's for some Mexican food ... and maybe there was a beverage or two in the mix.  Then we headed back to the GRB to wait in line for Sample Spree to begin.  This is a big deal.  I think the ticket price to this shindig is $15.  The doors opened at 8 p.m. and the Moda tables were swarmed immediately so I had to stay away.  Too many people.  I walked the room and just couldn't bring myself to get excited about fighting the crowd to try and get a bargain.  It was either that or the fact that I already had two bags hanging from my shoulder that were packed with goodies and the thought of adding more weight to the mix just "weighed" me down!

 

 

 

While we were waiting in line, I started talking to the girl behind me.  Donna and I chatted her up for quite awhile seeing as how we had 1.5 hours to kill.  We found out she was a fabric and pattern designer and she had a booth at market.  We were both super excited to pick her brain on how the process works and she was kind enough to give us lots of information.  She gave us her booth number and we told her we'd visit her on Saturday.

Saturday, Donna and I trot off to the GRB again, only this time not quite as early.  We were exhausted from the night before.  Our plan was to walk each aisle and in the process, we stopped and talked to numerous people.  On Friday we went to the Lakehouse Dry Goods presentation given by Holly Holderman.  On Saturday, we met Holly and Pam from Pam Kitty Morning.  What nice ladies.  Holly and Pam both gave us a lot of their time and answered all of our questions about designing and selling fabric and patterns. 

As we continued walking the aisles, I spied some gorgeous fabrics in the Blend booth.  I was drawn to fabrics designed by Jessica Swift, Amada Murphy and Josephine Kimberling.  I ended up ordering 2 bolts of fabric from each of these designers.  I got the added bonus of meeting "Joe" (the owner of Blend). 

Walking Market took all day and around 5:15 p.m. we realized we hadn't seen our designer friend from the night before.  We looked up her booth number and off we went.  Plus I wanted to get another glimpse of the fabric I had ordered early in the morning.  Imagine my surprise when I saw the Blend displays again and realized I bought fabric from Amanda Murphy who happened to be the girl we were looking for.  She was the designer from the night before.  Wow!  Full circle amazement!  We popped over to her booth and said hello.  I'm sure I was gushing from my recent realization that I bought fabric from the girl I spent an hour talking to the night before.  What a way to end my day.

There were many amazing "famous" people there.  Well, famous in the quilt world.  They're mostly just regular people and most were totally approachable.  It wasn't my first Schoolhouse and Sample Spree, but it was my first "market" day and it was simply glorious.