Colourwerx & Quilt Market

We’re back from our first journey as Colourwerx to the Houston Quilt Market and we had a blast….

Quilt Market is the bi-annual trade show where the latest and greatest the industry has to offer is on display and available to be ordered by shop owners and other quilting businesses…most of what we saw at this quilt market will be arriving in your shops 3-6 months from now.  Attending as a shop owner is always overwhelming – there are literally hundreds and hundreds of notion vendors, fabric companies and pattern designers on display, and each one offering something totally unique for your shop.  It is very hard not to just order absolutely everything! 🙂

But this time around, we were also back exhibiting as a pattern vendor….I had forgotten how tiring and also exhilarating having a booth can be…

Carl designed the booth and lucky for us, his past experience as a television production designer and roadie experience really paid off…

We had a nice corner booth space right next door to Moda Fabrics…it was a great spot!  Instead of hanging colourful drapes for our backdrop to the quilts, Carl designed and had printed a series of vinyl banners that showcased our logo and fabric designs – this way the logo and artwork provided some interest in the background (behind the quilts) but better than that, the banners rolled up neatly in our luggage for travel and they did not need fire proofing like most drapes do (a messy task indeed).

Also another added benefit, in lieu of the customary pipe & drape system used to hang drapes or quilts, Carl designed a 3-tiered truss system out of ordinary lightweight, metal EMT (electrical) conduit piping that we purchased on our arrival in Houston from the local Home Depot….This way we had a place for our vinyl banners to hang but also could uniquely layer and change the height of the quilts that were on display….pretty ingenious and pretty cost-effective considering the rental of the pipe and drape from the convention center would have been over $200 and Carl purchased his system from the Home Depot for about $80.00 – it was easily adaptable to whatever we needed.

The first day of set up was spent building Carl’s truss system and hanging the banners.

That night we had a hot date at Wal-Mart (yes, that’s right – Wal-Mart..) to pick up our stools and bar table. It is amazing what you can find at Wal-Mart Online…we had ordered the bar stools and table 2 weeks prior to market and asked them to be shipped to the local Houston Wal-Mart…so easy to do and no hassle or expense of shipping them to the convention center to potentially get lost or misplaced….we went to the special order desk picked up our delivery, and it was back to the hotel to settle in for a night of building bar stools and the table…

The second day of set up, we hung the quilts, placed our stools and chairs and finished off the booth with that fabulous rug from Ikea.  Once complete we “locked” up the booth with our trusty white tulle ‘security barrier’ – amazingly tulle or some garland-like barrier across your booth signals to the rest of the convention center world that you are now closed for the evening…not really secure but hey –  it works….

The next day, quilt market was officially open – Carl sported his paisley!….and it was great fun to be back exhibiting…we had a blast making new contacts but also seeing old friends from long ago..

But after 2 days of set up and three days of meeting and mixing, it was quickly over and packed away in less than 3 hours….always amazing to me how fast this goes!  So now we turn our energies towards our next deadline of November 20th when our patterns for the new designs will be released- very exciting!  And we look forward to the next Quilt Market, which will be in May in Salt Lake City!

All in all, quilt market was a blast, our new designs were a success and we had so much fun! We thank you all who stopped by the booth and welcome those of you who now follow us along on this amazing journey….

Until your next colour fix~
Linda & Carl

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