to market to market - part 2

 SO here we are at part 2 of my quilt market experience. I love Free Spirit and Westminster / Rowan fabric. I never know how to refer to them as they have so many names. What do you call them? Anyway they are in charge of the Big Guns of the quilting fabric world - namely, Amy Butler, Kaffe Fassett and Anna Marie Horner. Yep, I saw them all, even a brief gawking at Denyse Schmidt - no wonder these people did not make eye contact. I bet that quilt market will not let me go again next year. Just kidding...I always improve anything I attend or touch (when I feel like it). Again I am just kidding. So let's begin with Kaffe Fassett... I bought his new book at market. It is named Quilts in Sweden. Basically I want to make that stripy quilt. I just do. It is made with stripe fabric. Too easy, right? I will let you know.

 Here we see an action shot. Yes, I took pictures of Kaffe Fassett doing an everyday thing like climbing a step stool. You won't see this type of cutting edge photography anywhere else. It was funny to see all the quilting mortals tossing themselves before Kaffe. At least I was thinking that until I did the same thing to Amy.

So this collection was down the way a bit from KF. It is Parson Grey by David Butler (Amy Butler's husband). I quite like it. I REALLY like it. I wish he would not have been standing nearby looking at me because I wanted to do a full on touching of all the prints and I wanted to see if that was really a shirt on the dress form. I love the grays in this line and there is a great orange as well. I will probably buy each print in this collection. I have not done that is years, but with this one I will. The scale is fantastic for doing both small piecing and big stuff too. (you know that scale is a big pet peeve of mine).

I really liked this feather print a ton...I want to quilt like that. I bet I can...I will try it on the next quilt I do for myself.

So here I am with David. He had his Black Owl demo CDs out for the taking so I took one and a bumper sticker for my van. The CD only had 2 songs on it, but Sharon and I listened to them over and over and over for the 6 hour drive back to San Angelo. We were so punchy by the time we drove up to our houses that we had made up all sorts of new lyrics for the tunes. It sure was good of David to make us some music to drive to, and dodge skunks, raccoons and herds of deer.

Here I am with my Amy Butler. I totally lost my cool when I saw here there arranging her display pillows. I am pretty sure I went on about how much I love her fabric and I use her fabric the most of any other designer and how I love the grace and dignity it has and bla bla bla...I even thrust my Stu tote at her and said "here! see I use your fabric all the time!" Well...actually I had a stack of her fabric laying out to make a bag for myself with, but I put it away because I plan to make a bag for Steve Poe with it...my clients come before me (isn't that nice) so the bag I was holding up to her was actually made with mostly Denyse Schmidt and Anna Marie Horner. Thank goodness I did have a tiny bit of her charm line in the side of the bag. She peered down at my bag and said "would you like to see Gypsy Caravan (or maybe she said Charm) come back?" I said "Oh, Yes!" She granted my little wish right there and then. Either Charm or Gypsy Caravan is being reprinted. I was too star struck to recall which one. See, that is cool.

Anna Marie Horners booth was next down the line. It was as lovely as I had always seen it be on blogs in the past. She had some really great stitching patterns (like embroidery cross stitch stuff - I know there is a real word, but I can't think of it now.)

That is Anna Marie Horner in the long dress. I didn't bug her, because I was still embarrassed about throwing myself at Amy Butler.

So, here is Ty Pennington. He made 2 special guest appearances at market so fools like me could get his picture. I really don't have anything nice to say about his new collection so I probably shouldn't say anything at all.

Tina Givens had a great booth. Very warm and great fabric as usual. She is making dress patterns for women now and they are really good. Rowan is making linen and the patterns look great with it. Her patterns remind me of Cynthia Ashby. So if flowing linen is your thing You should make some dresses. I love linen dresses. Heck I didn't even know who I was talking to, I was just going on about how much I loved this ladies dress. She thanked me very kindly and then I noticed her name tag and it was Tina Givens. Here are some of her women's patterns.

OK, I think I am going to turn in and hope my poor back is better in the morning. Have a good night! I really will have some giveaways and a book review in the near future.

xo,
Tia