Our whirlwind weekend in Minnesota sounds like we had fun, but honestly, we were working every minute. From our 5:45am pickup going and 9:15 pm pickup coming home, there wasn’t a moment when Mary and I didn’t discuss ideas or products. Our flight from Chicago to Minneapolis was cancelled while we were in the air. We discovered that if we explored the hypothetical, we never lost patience with the confusion of stand-by flights, missing airline staff or hostage-like fast food. We both ate a lot of chocolate. The Minneapolis airport was pretty colorful. And I’m a fool for color. There’s a recording to “look down” so you don’t trip and kill yourself when the walkway ends.
Our stay at the Hilton was remarkable. Room, restaurant, and on site for a mile-long walk to the convention center, never breathing fresh air for the 2 1/2 days. I barely knew my way after two days of walking to and from and chat, chat, chating. Then the architecture became a landmark. “Oh, yea, I’m on the escalator again.
The exhibitors (fabric companies) did a great job enticing sales. I, of course stuck to my usual, with one new addition. Westminster and Free Spirit, more Kaffe, Kaffe, Kaffe and friends. It’s not hard to maintain our status as the largest retailer of Westminster/Rowan/Free Spirit in the region. We tweaked our Kokka collection and are exploring brand new fabric lines with great potential. We also visited with Liesl and Todd of Oliver + S and are very excited to be ordering from their first fabric line. We restocked our fast-selling Wonderfil threads, added some new books and tools to our toolboxes, saw the girls from Blue Underground Patterns, met Valori Wells (great booth decor), Tina Givens (great dress), Indygo Junction (new patterns).
This isn’t the half of it, but who had time to take pictures when we were having so much fun. So in the coming weeks, visit us as we try out some of our inspiration in the shape of samples at the shop.
Ideas in Cloth 