Sneak Peek: Still Crazy for Baby, Camera, Color, Quilts!, Spell It Out, Jolly Stuff

Since we haven't done this in a while, I thought you might like to see a little something that we've been hard at work on around here. First up: Still Crazy for Baby by Barb and Mary at Me and My Sister Designs. Barb and Mary signed advance copies of this at Quilt Market in Houston. They are a lot of fun to hang out with on a show floor. And they sent us some Halloween cookies that were e-x-c-e-l-l-e-n-t...my compliments to the chef. Anyway, the details are: 4 quilt designs in multiple colorways. Fast, easy and so much fun! $10.95, available now.









 And also available now-ish is the newest from the Modern Crafter series, Jolly Stuff by Linda Lum DeBono. 14 fresh Christmas designs to deck your halls all for $11.95. The fund thing about this series is that it's Christmas with a color twist, very pretty photos and big variety of projects.

 We've also been doing a whole lotta the cross stitch lately. The newest of the new is from Joan Elliott. Spell It Out is a collection of 21 alphabets (including both upper and lower cases) on a variety of subjets. Pirates! And fairies. And dogs and cats and Christmas and harvest and...you get the idea. Full-color charts are included...all for the low, low price of $10.95. Come on, cross stitch with me. You know you want to! OK, wait until November when this one's available.

 And finally, our newest Pat Sloan book: Camera, Color, Quilts! In this publication, Pat's going to teach an easy way to choose colors for your next quilts. It was a big hit with the Sloanies in the booth at Quilt Market. I included the back cover for this one because I want to live in the inspiration photo with the table runner on my dining table. 6 quilt designs, $12.95, available November-ish.

2006 Quilt Market, Day 2

Started out at 9:00 this morning to walk to the show (after I packed, wrote on my paper, and played my obsessive games searching for my driver's license, credit cards, car keys, etc. to be sure I could get home). I ran through the remaining 11 or 12 aisles, talked with some of our designers, and took pictures of every quilt that I stopped in front of. You can see that there weren't that many that I took the time to see. I'll post more pictures to my Flickr account Wednesday.


Then I walked back to the hotel to get on the 11:45 shuttle to the airport...along with Linda Lum DeBono who is one of the designers that I had missed at the show. It was meant to be! We had a great conversation about changes in quilting and crafting (it was a very popular conversation because I had it with just about every designer I talked to) and what Leisure Arts is looking for. I'm really hoping that great things come out of these conversations. Here are some random photos...

2006 Quilt Market, Day 1

On Saturday, International Quilt Market actually opens...to the public instead of just crate climbers. Let's see, back to the agenda. I think you're going to need another snack for this entry.

Saturday:
8:00-breakfast and walk to the convention center.
9:00-talk with the sales people about where quilts come from. Publications, that is, not really "where quilts come from." That would probably be a long conversation.
10:00-meet my friend Pat Sloan at her booth to walk over to the Hilton to watch her tape a quiltmercial for Quilter's News Network. Unfortunately, she's better at it than I am. Sigh. Oh, well! We still get a great quiltmercial for It's Your Turn! And I don't have to explain to anyone about calling Chippy a squirrel. I'll probably have to explain some of the things I said on-camera, but I can't remember what I said so I'll just have to think fast when they come up.
11-ish-back to the booth to pick up the other Cheryl. She's in a meeting with Very Important People from Primedia/Enthusiast Media about advertising stuff. Not so much quilt stuff, so I loiter to see how long she'll be. Then, I get called to the table and we had the best conversation about quilting. I hope that conversation will spark some great things.

12:00-I stop the Very Important Cheryl mid-sentence so that we can get to our lunch appointment with Mr. Jim West. His company is Sew Many Places. We get over to the Hilton and order lunch. Of course, it arrives at almost the minute I'm supposed to be in the booth for the book signing so I streak away. My club arrives at the booth much later in a black box, a little worse for the wear, but I scarfed it anyway.

1:00-3:00 (with a break for club-scarfing)-book signing with Tammy Kelly for It's Quilt Magic. This was so much fun. Tammy's great with the shop owners, giving class and kit tips. She had a good turnout, too, and gave away all 150 copies we brought with us. Good job, Tammy! (Here are some pictures. I'm so glad I had the camera, my hair was probably standing straight up at this point. If you look closely, you can see Joan the Lazy Girl in the background.)
3:00-met with really nice ladies from Mary Engelbreit and United Media. We had a great conversation about where quilting and crafting are going, trends, looks, sophistication, etc. We were almost flattened by a falling A.T.C. board, but lived to tell the tale.
4-ish-I streak through 5 or 6 aisles (one of which featured Frank from Trading Spaces doing a demo). Went back to the booth to pick up the Very Important Cheryl to try to get her to go back to Frank's booth to get a picture because she has such good luck with famous people (and I really am a dork), but she was all busy with another meeting with another advertising meeting. This time, she sent me on my way instead of bringing me to the table. Was it something I said? I'm pretty sure it was my hair, but I can't really help that.

6:00-the show closes. I've never stayed this long and have no idea how to get home at 6:00-shuttle's impossible and the cabs are worse. We go over to the Hilton to ask for restaurant ideas and then enter the taxi line and wait. And wait. And wait. When we get a taxi, we get lucky and get a nice guy. He takes us back to Josephine's to pick up Cheryl's forgotten binder, then go to a true hole-in-the-wall Mexican place called The Original Ninfa's. And wait. And wait. And wait. But the food was good, the margaritas even better. They call us a cab. And we wait. And wait. And wait. We manage to luck out and share a cab with someone heading back to the same hotel. It just so happens that Cheryl knows her. She has that kind of luck.

2006 Quilt Market Booth, After

So, I started with an agenda for Thursday. On Friday, things started to blur and Saturday is just one large blob, so the agenda's going to fall apart. Here's what I can do for Friday. This is a long one. Grab a snack.

Friday:



7:00 a.m.-meet for breakfast, then walk to the convention center.
7:45-8:00-stand around, waiting to be let into the convention center.

8:00-2:00-finish set up, climb in and out of the crates a few more times, continue to panic about the posters that the designer is expecting, make rash promises that said posters are coming soon (but then, they turn out to be sound promises, so it all works out in the end). Stop to talk to other designers, looking and smelling like a curly haired crate climber. Still, the booth looks great in the end.

2:00-4:00 p.m.-run to Kinkos to make copies, run to the Hilton to try to get a cab back to the Hyatt, find a mean cab driver who calls someone, while we're actually in the back seat, to complain about getting a bad trip. Scarf up lunch, run upstairs to make myself presentable...in 30 minutes or less. Believe me, presentable takes me longer than 30 minutes but I showered, dried, straightened, made up, sprayed, spritzed, and ironed. On time.








4:30 p.m.-meet Joan Hawley, the Lazy Girl herself, in the hallway for her schoolhouse at 4:50. And the crowd's building...huge turnout! Very successful, and Joan did a great job of selling her publication and the Exclusively You product. It was really exciting to work with such great people (Joan and my entourage, Kelly and Cheryl). The place was packed, standing room only, and I was walking over people to move around to get my pitiful shots. Still, here they are. (Sorry, Joan, I should have had one of the entourage take pictures, but they would have had to swing from the ceiling to do it, I think.)

5:30 p.m.-race over to the Hilton to tape our first quiltmercial for Quilters News Network. It's hard to say how much fun this was...but it was. I want to do it again. That much fun. I'm not sure how I'll feel when I see my cheesy-ness on the actual quiltmercial. I'll have to get back to you on that.

7ish- take stuff back to the booth, make some minor changes.
Who knows what time-make it to Josephine's for some excellent Italian. Walk back to the hotel at 9-ish along with the marchers.

2006 Quilt Market Booth, Before

Since I didn't have a chance to post while I was in Houston (fancy hotel=expensive or slow connection), I'm going to travel back in time to show you what we did.

Thursday:
7:00 a.m.-blast out of Benton to Little Rock's airport. Actually, I blasted for about 5 minutes on the interstate, then I stop-ped and go-ed all the way there, then ran like crazy to get to the check-in and through the one, only one, one line at the security gate. Still, made it with a little time to spare (and talked to a former co-worker, they turn up in the strangest places, like working security for the airport instead of designing jewelry).
11:00 a.m.-landing and then on the way to the Hyatt Regency in Houston, nice place. In case you were wondering, Mapquest says it's .82 miles from the convention center. I'm suspicious of that figure. When you're walking it, through homeless folks and marchers, in 1000% humidity, it feels longer.
12:00 p.m.-arrive at convention center...to wait...for hours...while the booth...comes out of the crates...and the nice labor guys put it together.
3:30 p.m.-hop in the crates to start pulling out stuff, stuff, stuff. Put out that stuff, try to avoid cursing pegs, splinters, bum knees, and Diet Coke withdrawal.
6:00 p.m.-assess the damage. We did pretty good the first day. Walk back to the hotel.

Here are the pics of the booth...before it was beautified. If you look closely, you can see the friendly labor guy in the first picture and the correct pose for the people waiting...patiently to jump into the crates to pull out product.

O.o.O-Headed to Houston!

One last post before I'm "Out Of Office" on my way to Quilt Market! Had a great, great, great conversation with Joan Hawley from Lazy Girl Designs. She's started up her own blog (in addition to a nice site, yahoo groups, and other things...can she really be a Lazy Girl after all?). Here's the link. She's posted some models made from the instructions out of Bold Bags but using more fabric. I'm in serious like with the bucket bag.





Exciting things I get to do:
1. Meet Joan at Schoolhouse on Friday afternoon.
2. Tape a quiltmercial for our Exclusively You product.
3. Hang out with Pat Sloan on Saturday morning while she tapes a quiltmercial for us.
4. See Pat's new fabric...live and in person.
5. Meet Tammy Kelly and shop owners at her book signing.
6. Stop in and say "Howdy" to our other designers that I know will be exhibiting-Tammy Tadd, Me and My Sister, Miss Rosie.
7. Meet with some other Very Important Peeps. Hope to make new friends along the way.
8. I'm also setting my hopes on a slice of cheesecake at some point in the weekend. I don't know why. I just want one.

I'll try to post while I'm there... since I don't have to use my feet to do it, I should be able to put up something now and again. If not, there's always next week!

International Quilt Market, the ads

Since it's getting very, very close to time for this year's Fall Quilt Market, I thought I'd post the advertising we're using. The photography comes from #4338 It's Quilt Magic by Tammy Kelly. She'll be in our booth on Saturday signing books. In the past, we've done this with Debbie Mumm and Emilie Richards and had a great attendance.

Ad in show book.



The bi-fold sell sheet. You have to use your imagination for this one. It's an 11" x 17" sheet, printed on both sides and folded. It shows our new publications for this year.


































Poster in new product area. Last year, for the first time, we put up a poster in the new products area. This display stays up for market and for the consumer show, Quilt Festival, the week after market. It highlights our newest and best.