Spring Quilt Market 2012 - Kansas City! Part One

It's that time again... Quilt Market time! This year, the spring market was in Kansas City, MO from May 18 to May 20. This is where we get all of our late summer / early fall fabric, and it's where designers debut their latest collections - so it's pretty exciting if you're a fabric junkie like me!

Christine and I both made the trip this year, and it was fun for me to introduce her to all the great folks who make our fabric-buying job so pleasant. Plus, it's great to meet up with other shop owners across the country and gossip! 

Day one, first stop was Alexander Henry. We carry a ton of this fabric, and it's always a pleasure to see Miho, Simone, Nicole and Philip! I'm quite fond of bright fabric, so I was happy to see some new colorways in the 'Mocca' print.

A lovely assortment of calicos! Perfect for summer sundresses. I'll be picking up some of the newest fabrics this upcoming week, so stay tuned for some more pics!

Next stop was the Yuwa booth! This time, I only left my camera case there instead of the whole camera like last year, and the lovely and amazing Etsuko tracked me down over the entire market to return it. Sigh.

My favorite fabric of all time (so far...) is definitely the Yoshiko Jinzenji collection, and we ordered some more of the colors that we didn't get last time. Some of it is already out of print - eeek!

We are so lucky to be very close to many of our Japanese distributors, so much of what was on display at Quilt Market is already in our shop. You can see much of it at this blog post, and here are some extras that we just ordered:

Keiko Goke

'Cotorienne' by Anyan

Some random cute prints as well:

Christine and I definitely wanted to swing by Andover Fabrics to check out the new collections by two friends of ours - Lizzy House and Marisa from Creative Thursday. Here are some fabrics from Marisa's 'Ric Rack Rabbits' and 'Red Thread' collections:

And we got to see some sneak previews of Lizzy's latest when she was here in L.A. for a visit, but of course it's better to see it all in person! I just fell in love with the 'Constellation' fabric, which will be arriving in November (hedgehog).

Moon phases and some cool triangle action!

From Andover's 'City Scene' group:

Then Christine got a big surprise! Many of you know she is in the final phases of producing her first two commercial patterns (check them out here!) (and we'll have them in the shop very soon!) (and she's teaching the Derby Dress as a class!). The completed envelopes were being shipped to her house while we were en route to Kansas City, so she hadn't seen them yet - but her printers had some on display at Market. So that was the first time she got to see them in person! Of course, they are lovely.

We have been eagerly awaiting Lotta Jansdotter's newest collection 'Bella', so that was definitely on our list for the first day! This fabric will be shipping in August.

 And hooray for new Echino collection! Usually, Etsuko designs a more graphic set of prints for the spring market, like her Ni-co line (London, Scooters, Cars, Sunglasses etc) but this spring she chose to go in a more whimsical direction with 'Decoro':

'Dahlia' - on the lighter weight cotton/linen sheeting

'Buck' - on the heavier cotton/linen canvas

'Frame' - heavier canvas

'Zebra' on the lighter weight sheeting (aaaaah! cannot wait for this!) and 'Buck' made up into a bag:

It was hard to get a good picture of this, but it's random-polka-dot-cat-head-bow-tie-bunny double gauze!

The odd red anchor and unexpected colors for polka dot double gauze:

We got to see the latest Nani Iro collection a little bit ago, and the fabric should be arriving in the shop in about 2 weeks. You can see what we ordered here! I'm VERY excited to get my hands on some of that border print fabric...

Heather Ross debuted a new collection for Kokka as well, 'Nursery Versery' Here we have the patchwork print in all the colors:

And the Itsy Bitsy Spider!

They are ADORABLE:

 

One of the biggest thrills about this Quilt Market is the fact that we have a NEW SHOP to fill with lovely fabric!

 We have always had to keep an eye on how much volume was being purchased as we had a pretty small shop. But now, we have a bigger shop! Which means we can branch out a bit and carry some lines that I have had my eye on for awhile, like Monaluna. They are an organic fabric company that makes the cutest prints, and many fabrics have a great vintage flair. 

From the newest 'Fox Hollow' collection, shipping in June:

Some of their signature prints from 'Havana' released in new colorways, shipping in September:

Well, that was a lot of fabric. Stay tuned for Part Deux, which will feature new stuff from Melody Miller, Cloud9 Organic Fabric, Amy Butler, Anna Maria Horner, Tula Pink, Denyse Schmidt, Penguin & Fish Embroidery and more!