Written by Laura Chaney, daughter
Today we’re sharing our last recap post from the 2015 Spring Quilt Market. Previously we talked about Schoolhouse and Sample Spree, and today we’re finishing it up with the Expo Hall.
Since we were at Quilt Market with the AQS Publishing booth we had special exhibitor name badges that got us into the expo hall when it was still being set up. I’d never been inside of an expo hall during set up before, so it was really fun to see how the different booths came together. Some of the booths had amazingly elaborate set-ups, where some were more much more simple.
The big fabric collections had booths that not only displayed their new fabric collections but also allowed space for their sales representatives to sell directly to the store owners. I see this kind of set up each year for the international education conference I go to for my day job, but this type of a expo hall was a new experience for Mom.
Once the expo hall was officially open, Mom and I carefully made our way through each and every aisle. Similar to Sample Spree, much of the Expo Hall was geared towards shop owners and helping them find new notions and fabrics for the coming season. We didn’t let that stop us from getting some ideas of our own, and finding some fun new things to experiment with in our designing.
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| Zirkel Magnet |
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| Fabric Elements from Fabric Editions. |
Even though we aren’t shop owners everyone in the expo hall was nice to us and more than willing to tell us about their fabric collections, supplies or patterns. It was also lots of fun to meet some of the amazing quilters that I follow online, including the woman who has opened up free motion quilting on a domestic machine to thousands of quilters, Leah Day.
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| Leah Day |
Of course, the most exciting part of our time in the expo hall was doing two author demos for Contain It! English Paper-Pieced Style Accessories at the AQS Publishing booth.
We hope you’ve enjoyed hearing a little bit about our experiences at our very first Quilt Market. We learned so much about the industry side of quilting and crafting, and had a great time getting to meet other designers, shop owners, and manufacturers alike!
Looks like so much fun! Are you or your mom going to be at the next AQS show when it comes back to Albuquerque next year? I will be going again and would love to meet up with either of you or both of you to say hello. I will go the first day of the show whenever it is going to be.