Houston Market 2011 Recap

Whew!  Back and recovered (kind of!) from the Houston Quilt Market and Festival!  

Market is a ginormous wholesale market.  It's all biz to biz selling.  

My humble booth- La Todera Sewing and Craft Patterns

It's the place to be for a pattern designer- there you can canoodle with distributors, their sales forces, store owners from all over the world, fabric manufacturers, book publishers, and more!

...Meeting new people...

Sue Penn from Studio e Fabrics and her adorable daughter.

A new friend from Clover, International, Japan!

And reconnecting with friends!

Susan Allen and pal from The Quilt Asylum, surely one of the coolest quilt shops ever.

Lorene Bonewitz from Sew it Up.  Not only an awesome customer and friend, but an uber talented seamstress as well!!!

Once again, Margaret Travis of Eazy Peazy Quilts and I planned to have our booths set up next to one another.  Makes it more fun, and we can help each other out!  This time tho, I got the better end of the deal.  Margaret had both her sis Marie and good friend Theresa helping her, who were also very generous about helping me out, too!  Thanks guys!!

Margaret in her super eye catching booth for her company, Eazy Peazy Quilts.

One of my favorite moments was when my friend and roomie Cecilia Koppmann showed up.  I was sure I wasn't going to see her until the evening, but she surprised me around lunchtime the second day of Market!!  It was just like in a movie or something- she genuinely surprised me and I let out a squeal like a piglet when I saw her!!
Ceci came to Houston this year because one of her gorgeous quilts was accepted into the Houston Quilt Expo this year:

Cecilia and her awesome quilt

She also came to help me out at my booth (she kept me standing with a steady supply of caffeine and sandwiches) and to take classes together in Houston after Market.  We had been talking about taking classes together since forever, and it truly was a dream come true.  More on that tomorrow!!