Quilt Market Rocks!

We are just back from Quilt Market in Houston with our heads spinning as usual....so much to look at there and digest and all in less than 3 days! I got to meet Amy Butler for the first time, wow is she tall, and also nice! Said hello to Kaffe Fassett and simply love his new collections plus his newest book, Quilts in the Sun. He partners his fabrics with Philip Jacobs in the book, so of course I had to order some Philip Jacobs fabrics for the very first time.

There were at least 10 Japanese fabric dealers exhibiting this year...up from only 1 just 3 years ago, so we can all expect to see more of Japan's so beautiful fabrics. So many mills have collections that echo the contemporary large scale prints of Kaffe Fassett and Amy Butler, but I am sorry to say they are pale imitations and I will take Amy and Kaffe any day over any of them! Lots of new gadgets including the Bobbin Winder which I just got in stock and will be listing shortly....great idea, a little square winder powered by either electricity or batteries that can wind your bobbins while you keep sewing without interruption.

Other trends include more fabrics from Australia....I will be listing some of what I bought later this week. Less machine embroidery and more companies selling long arm quilt machines which I continue to test drive and drool over. I do think that will be my big pre-retirement purchase in a few years if/when I wind down the SusieCraft business. By then hopefully prices will be a bit lower and choices even more varied.

I came away just dazzled by The Quilt of Belonging http://www.invitationproject.ca/ . This is an enormous quilt which includes blocks from every country on earth plus all of Canada's native tribes. If you ever get a chance to view it, it is worth any trip to do so. We nearly couldn't pull ourselves away.