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We arrived in Minneapolis on Wednesday afternoon. After dropping off our luggage at the hotel (we stayed at the Residence Inn, which I highly recommend if you're traveling with someone you will be with all day long for four straight days. I love my mother, but having your own room and bathroom is a blessing at the end of a long day), we spent the rest of the day exploring downtown. Minneapolis is such a beautiful city! I didn't take many pictures, so I took some pictures from the internet that I think give you a pretty good idea of what it looks like. My favorite part was the Mary Tyler Moore statue : ) After eating a great dinner at a local restaurant, we headed back to the hotel to get some sleep. We had to rest up for schoolhouse the next day!
(Convention Center)
So on Thursday morning, we headed down to the convention center for a long day full of mini presentations, put on by fabric and pattern designers and fabric companies. We went to 13 schoolhouses and they were all great! We got to see Monique Dillard demonstrate her flying geese ruler and her beautiful new fabric line (which I'm pretty sure we will be carrying), Shannon Fabric reps taught us some cool new ways to work with minky, and our friend Renee Plains from http://www.liberty-star.com/ entertained us while showing off adorable projects from her great new book, A Bird in Hand. Those were some of our favorites, but they were all really interesting and fun!
The next day market officially began! It was so overwhelming. There were hundreds of booths! Some of them were just amazing. I was going to take pictures of some of our favorites, but right as I got my camera out to take the first picture, a lady next to me got scolded by a booth owner. I was too chicken to try and take one after that, but some of the designers got some great pictures you should check out. I know Mary Andra Holmes from Sisters' Quilting Trunk and Ann Sutton of Bunny Hill both have some on their blogs and I'm sure the others will get some up soon. It was so much fun to meet new people like Amy Butler and Jo Morton and to catch up with people we already know. We also got some great ideas that we can't wait to implement in the Shoppe. I think my favorite part of the day, however, was dinner. We were lucky enough to be invited out by our pal Carrie Nelson of Miss Rosie's Quilt Co. Being the famous person that she is (she likes when we point that out to her ; )), she naturally hangs out with other famous people from the quilting world. We were joined by Monique Dillard, who I mentioned above, Bonnie Sullivan and Kathy Schmitz, both designers for Moda, some of their friends and family, and Judy Adams, a friend of Carrie's and one of our customers. It was so much fun getting to know these ladies. They are all very talented and very nice people.
Saturday was our last day, so we went back to our favorite booths, visited some that we had missed, and said goodbye to some of our friends. We got back home Saturday night and we were exhausted! I had so much fun and can't wait until next year in Salt Lake City.
We are still trying to get caught up from being gone, but I will be blogging again in the next couple of days about some of the new fabric that came while we were away, so stay tuned.
Until next time...
