Quilt Market Highlights

Esther and I attended Spring Quilt Market in Kansas City last week. We arrived late Tuesday night, and headed straight to our hotel rooms for the night.
Wednesday we got all our badges for the event at the conference center, which by the way is built directly over top of several interstates. Afterwards we found a couple places for parking during the event and than headed out to Hamilton, which is the home of Missouri Star Quilt Company. Esther and I spent a few hours touring through the 12 shops, and met and took a photo with Jenny, of course we did some shopping while we were at it. We had a lunch at J's Burger Dive, and those were some really good burgers!
Back in Kansas City we went to the Steamboat of Arabia Museum. This steamboat sunk in the Missouri River in 1856 and was located in the middle of a cornfield in 1988. The boat was full of cargo destined for new mercantiles, and so all the artifacts are brand new, never been used 1856 originals. It was really neat to see a Museum full of brand new but old things, all the dishes were in perfect condition, and there were lots of boots, buttons, hardware and other household items as well.
After dinner at the Texas Roadhouse we add a break at the hotel, than decided to go out clothes shopping for a little while, Esther and I both found some fun summer outfits, as well as a great kids store that we did some damage at as well.
Thursday was a day full of Schoolhouse Sessions. These sessions are quick 30 minute lectures on a variety of topics. The topics ranged from class ideas, upcoming book releases, new fabric and patterns. shop display ideas, and more.
After Schoolhouse was Sample Spree. A number of vendors have booths set up with their product at a slightly discounted price, when it opens it is a free for all with people running all over the place and grabbing whatever they can get their hands on. It is so intense and so much fun! Esther and I came away with some great fat quarter bundles and several Aurifil Thread Boxes.
On the way back to the car we were trying to guess how much fabric we had and we decided there was no way we could have 150lbs worth on our shoulders, but when we got to the airport the next day it turned out we had close to that, as between our three suitcases we had over 150lbs and had to move some of it our carry-ons, and our suitcases together weighed less than 50 lbs on the incoming trip.
Friday was the actual Market. Exhibitors from the quilting world all come together to market their goods to shop owners and industry professionals. There are fabric designers, pattern designers, notion companies, books, batting, threads, and more. It is so neat to walk through all the booths and meet the people behind the products we love and use all the time.
Esther got her Moda All Stars On A Roll book signed by many of the Moda Designers that contributed patterns to the book. And I was able to get an early copy of Sunday Best Quilts by Sherri McConnell and Corey Yoder, and they kindly signed it for me too.
We met with Aaron Hoffman of Hoffman California, and showed him some of our recent quilts made using their fabrics, and he was thrilled to here that we have nearly all of the Call of The Wild Digital Prints in our shop.
We reconnected with Brad from Aurifil and talked about how things were going, and we talked about some new things with the Aurifil App. In the app you can "stash" the colors and weights of Aurifil that you have and make wish lists for what you still want, you can also see stores that carry it, what each weight should be used for, ad more. Brad said they are working on a color matcher for the app but it is not quite ready for the public use yet.
We also met with many of the fabric designers from Moda, Hoffman, Art Gallery and even a few new companies that are just starting out.
There are some fun new products coming from some of our favorite notion companies as well.
After walking through all the booths it was time to head home. We arrived at the airport with 3 heavy suitcases and boarded the first of two flights home. We were a little worried about our connection time, which was only 40 minutes, but storms across the North Western States turned that 40 minute connection into a 4 hour one. When we arrived in Great Falls at 1:30 am we headed to a hotel instead of the highway. After about 6 hours of sleep we got on the road and made it safely home to spend the remainder of Saturday with our families.
It was great to attend Quilt Market again this year, and we have some fun new ideas to implement, new classes for the fall, and new fabric to start making fresh samples. And there is a lot of new fabrics coming to the shop this fall!
To say our brains felt like exploding from all the new inspiration is not an exaggeration.
We truly love what we do, and we are so excited to be able to share the love of quilting with all of you!
Kayla