Amber and I were just in the lovely state of Texas attending the Fall Quilt Market. This is where we get to preview and order new fabric collections, find new pattern companies, and look for any other sewing/quilting related products we can find. Here are some of our highlights:
There are all sorts of famous crafty people at Quilt Market--we were super-excited to run into Meg McElwee who designs and owns Sew Liberated patterns. We love her
Schoolhouse Tunic pattern. Amber happened to be wearing one of her Schoolhouse Tunics which Meg spotted right away. She was so nice and looked adorable wearing the original Schoolhouse Tunic which you may recognize from the pattern cover.
Amy Butler's booth is always filled with inspiration and ideas! She was showing off her highly anticipated collection,
Soul Blossoms, at the market and we can hardly wait to get these fabrics in this December.
We always love visiting the Seven Islands booth. Seven Islands distributes fabric from Japan so we order all sorts of amazing-ness from them. This market, they were debuting a new line from our favorite Japanese designer, Etsuko Furuya, who designs all the
Echino prints. Her new collection is as colorful and striking as ever and we even ordered laminates of it! Here we are with her and a weirdly cute deer mannequin.
Seven Islands was also debuting a new designer, Melody Miller, who has a 60's inspired collection coming out for Kokka. We love the interesting colors and the vintage kitsch designs. Check out the impressive explosion of Kokka sewn goods on display!
We also picked up some new Japanese sewing kits to make these precious creatures. How can you resist?! These are available now to purchase in the store and include English translation.
Hokkoh is another Japanese company that does some crazy prints! We loved the candy they offered to keep us going--too-cute Mameki Neko cat candies.
Michael Miller had some awesome new prints coming out - our favorite were reproductions from mid-century designer, Tammis Keefe. We ordered so much fabric from Michael Miller that I got to spend 30 seconds in their "wind-of-fortune" room. This experience made me really glad I've never been a game show contestant. I did manage to collect enough dollars to win 2 charm packs from their upcoming "Bonnes Amies" collection!
We love the embroidery patterns from Penguin and Fish and were pleased to see Alyssa is coming out with new dog embroidery patterns. These fancy embroidery patterns are just available in a few breeds, but we can hardly wait to get them in stock, they are soo cute. She also has a new sewing pattern out for a sweet alligator toy.
FreeSpirit Fabrics are really killing it this season. They have so many great designers and collections we can hardly contain our excitement! We are absolutely loving the new collection from Tula Pink.
Parisville is a fantasy explosion of ships, hidden mice, geometric dot damasks and lion wigs. It is really inspiring us and we will be sure to post when we receive it!
Ms. Pink herself was delightful as she shared with us stories of living on her hundreds-of-acres ranch in small-town Missouri. Her booth was beautiful and really showed off the
Parisville collection.
Jay McCarroll's new collection and is very different from his first two and we love his new direction.
Habitat is really fashion-oriented and are dreaming of sewing up tops, skirts, and dresses out of these prints. Nice work, Jay!
Anna Maria Horner was there promoting her newest collection,
Innocent Crush. We just received all of the home dec, cotton velveteens and voiles from this collection and it was great to get inspired by her booth. Anna Maria is always pushing the envelope with her fabric choices. Last year she brought us her beautiful voiles and this year we are excited to be carrying her cotton velvelteens. These fabrics are super soft and we love that they are made of natural cotton! Ms. Horner also had some bias tape made up from the collection and we really hope this goes to production so we can carry it! Anna Maria spotted me from afar in my brand new Innocent Crush top and so of course we had to stop for a photo-op.
Ty Pennington of TLC's Trading Spaces and ABC's Extreme Makeover is expanding into the world of fabric design. His collection for Westminster was the talk of the show and he was swamped with eager fans getting autographs.
Some of the smaller fabrics companies are our favorite ones to visit at quilt market. We get to talk with the people who are designing and manufacturing their own fabrics. Birch is one of these companies and it was so great to meet Cynthia, the woman behind it all. Cynthia and her husband, Jason, collaborated on their newest collection,
Avalon. We know you will love the bicycles and birds - together at last!
Another small but amazing company is Cloud 9 Organics. Cloud 9 is introducing 3 new collections by 3 new designers - Heather Moore, Julia Rothman and Geninne Zlatkis. Each of these designers has a very distinct style and we are looking forward to these more sophisticated and grown up collections from Cloud 9.
Last, but not least, we got to meet Lizzy House! Lizzy is the designer behind the Castle Peeps collection and has another new collection on the way. She was adorable and sweet and we are excited to get to know her better. That's right, Lizzy will be in Denver next Spring so stay tuned for uber-exciting-hang-out-crafting-action!
I know you all are probably as excited as we are about the new fabrics! Most of these will be coming out starting in January and then throughout the beginning of the year into spring. We can all look forward to tons of amazing sewing projects in 2011!
