My First Ever Quilt Market - Part 2

Sunday morning arose really early because we had an 8:30 “required attendance” panel discussion of the state of the industry. It was a bit annoying for three reasons. One was that it was Sunday morning instead of Sunday afternoon. Secondly, it was 8:30 in the morning. Thirdly, once we got there, we realized that ALL of the information gathered ceased in Feb. of 2022. So, there was ZERO data since Feb. of 2022. We all know what’s happened since Feb. of 2022. At least here in Florida, we’ve been hit with horrific inflation, and a lot of the normal of 2019 hasn’t returned to the quilting world.

But, it was fascinating, if I took my mind off that it wasn’t Nov. of 2022 but Feb. of 2022. Some things I’d been being told to my by reps and other people big in the industry simply weren’t the same as the data collected by the questionnaire collectors.

We sat right behind Jill Finley of Riley Blake fame. She talked to us, and explained who each of the people on the panel were, so we could listen to them speak with a little more confidence than had we not know anything about them at all.

We later on met up with Jill again, and she would LOVE to come to our store in Florida, sometime, and do something with and for us! We’ll be planning that out. She does beautiful work and I’m totally drawn to her designs!

We had located a church that met at 10 a.m. for Worship, instead of the normal 11 a.m., and that was perfect for us. So we did our 8/10 of a mile sprint walk to the car, and got to the church right around 10. The church, Arise Baptist Church, in Houston, was wonderful. The music was a balm to my soul, and Ken had met the preacher down here at a conference a couple of years in a row. It was terrific to be worshipping with fellow believers in a different state, in a different way, in a different building than we normally do, yet worshipping the same God, and hearing it in a new way. I was truly encouraged.

We asked the preacher for a good place that served beef. After all, going to Texas, shouldn’t you get beef? So, he recommended Gabby’s BBQ, a place a lot like BubbaQ’s near us, where you go to the counter, order, and then they bring it to you. It was exceedingly fast, and delicious!

Steven and I had an appointment with Like Sew, the host company for our website, for 2 p.m., and we didn’t want to be late. So we hustled back to the center. Over an hour later, we got up from our seat, having worked our way through our list of issues, and went back to enjoying the views. We didn’t take pictures of the guys because they weren’t too interested in that sort of thing.

The ConventionCenter closed at 6 p.m., so we headed back to the Airbnb, for what we hoped was a good evening of my getting some things done. Steven and I both tackled our homework!

 

I had been told that I could get a convention price special if I would only do “this” and “that.” Well, I only managed to get “this” done before exhaustion hit me.

Monday morning and I had only just a few hours. We had to be at the airport at 4 p.m., to return the car, check in and everything else you do for a 6 p.m. flight.

So, on Monday morning we were approaching things seriously. We had an 8 a.m. seminar and then I had to get serious. Lots to do. Little time. I had made a 9:15 appointment for Quilter’s Select, so I could get their awesome rulers ordered. The sales representative had to come outside to bring me in, since the floor didn’t officially open until 10 a.m.

I had a 10 a.m. appointment with Amy, at the MODA booth. There we pulled up my shopping cart, and Amy got my order submitted with the Market Special pricing.

I managed to buy enough to be allowed to spin the wheel of discounts and I got a $50 discount on my entire purchase! I was thankful for anything, really, but it was hard to look at the other things on the wheel, some valuing up to $2500 and be grateful for $50. Isn’t that funny how that works? It’s amazing how selfish we can get in no time flat, isn’t it? If every item on the wheel would have been $10 off and I got $50, I would have been thrilled! Silly me…

After that,  I ran by the By Annie booth, dropped off my order. Then, we hightailed it to the 3 yard quilt booth, and dropped off that order.

We looked around a bit more, and eventually, we decided our bodies, arms, legs and every part of us hurt enough. We had managed to buy enough goodies to fill our spare suitcases and carryons. In fact, we weren’t sure how we were going to get it all to the airport! But we did!

We were trying to stay awake….. on the way home!

We took Southwest BACK to Florida, because we could get two free suitcases going back. We had only taken one carryon to the show, but we had bought duffel bags that would fold up inside our carryons. We filled those nicely, and after several delays and an unexpected plane change, and some bad weather (bad weather for flights, great weather for plants), we finally made it back to our home at 2:30 in the morning! STUPID me had arranged an 8 a.m. meeting with one of our reps, but I knew I could do it via phone.

I’ll start  unpacking and gettingthings out of the bags and onto the shelves and website this week! Unbelievably, the order that we placed with Amy, from Moda, on Monday morning at 10 a.m. already arrived to us on Saturday. 21 boxes!! Yikes!

Just one of many beautiful sights to behold. This is Jill Finley’s booth (shown above)

What have I done? Oh yes, I “did” Quilt Market! We did Market! It was oh so much fun.

It was like drinking from a fire hydrant, to use my husband’s expression. It’ll be a while before I quit gasping for breath.

Would I do it again? I’d love to. Only next time I’d love to have my sister there with me.. and we could wear matching shirts, with the back saying, “I’m not Becky, I’m Rachael,” and hers saying, “I’m not Rachael, I’m Becky.” Wouldn’t that be fun?

 

 So there you go - thank you very much for this entertaining view of Quilt Market. Hope you are starting to feel recovered.

Rachael Woodard7 Comments