Quilt Market part too-whit too-whoo

This is how fast we had to move to make sure we saw everything. ok, maybe it's just camera blur..

Anna: I don't know why I wrote this post's title like that. I reckon it may just be because one of the images that kept cropping up over the next few days at Quilt Market was Owls. Now, you probably all know we like owls - we have the ghost owl in our tree, we had a huge ricrac owl (before he got unwound) and we have at least 2 other owls that I can think of in the shop. So now they've all caught on, and owls are everywhere!

Anyway, back to the important business that was Quilt Market.

The days usually started off with a class. We fabric shops need to learn too, you know. My classes were more 'lecture' like (when will I ever be old enough to sit in a lecture and not want a snooze???), whereas Rachael and Mum seemed to be able to pick classes where they actually made things, so I will let them do the talking (well, Rachael probably, Mum probably not).

Rachael: Yes Anna is right I was lucky enough to accidently choose courses that were more practical than many. One of the highlights was attending a class in Sashiko quilting. We were supposed to be learning to quilt the "Zen" way. We had to relax, we had to learn Sashiko history, we had to be calm and concentrate on nothing but the cloth, the needle and the thread...... it took an hour before our tutor would even let us start stitching! Needless to say when I did finally get started I was so excitied my stitching was anything but Zen! I'd love to pretend the photo above is my finished work but I just about managed three lines of stitching. As always it was a really friendly class and I expect you can tell it was also Halloween - I've never seen so many grown women in orange - I love an excuse for fancy dress!
Interesting Sashiko fact number one: Fireman used to be hailed as rock stars in ancient Japan due to their protection of the paper lined houses - their coats were made of many layers of cloth and stored in barrels of water for protection from the heat. Sashiko stitching was used to hold all the layers of cloth together and even today firemen parade at ceremonies flashing their coats open and shut to show off the decorative (yet very practical) stitching.

Anna: One of my best bits of the whole show was finally seeing in the flesh the Melody Miller range for Kokka, Ruby Star Rising. It is as fantabulous as I had hoped. I had a total star struck moment during a class when two ladies wearing lots of this lovely range came and stood beside me. As I knew it wasn't available yet I knew one of them must be Melody Miller herself. How excited was I?

the lovely Melody Miller and me

Ruby Star Rising by Melody Miller for Kokka - check out the viewfinder print- how could you not want that?

And of course very very very exciting is the new Echino Autumn 2010 range - how could we not love this?

Bird's featured again in the designs - and much of the colour palette is the same as we have already seen from previous echino ranges - so it will mix and match well with what you and we already have!

I'm thinking about an echino giveaway - how about being one of the first people in the UK to own an echino 2010 fat eighth pack? To win one of these just write a comment about how much you love echino below and we'll randomly select a winner in 2 weeks time!

The very talented Cynthia Mann from Birch Fabrics

I was super excited to meet Cynthia Mann from Birch fabrics - I have been admiring her fabric for a while but never actually managed to sort out an order (would have wanted it all, I need to cut down somewhere!) - but seeing it all in the flesh and meeting Cynthia sold me on it - expect it in the new year - but I'll definitely let you know when it gets here!

Trish Preston from Two Peas in a Pod and Me

Anna: I first came across Trish Preston when I commissioned some of her work for Sew Hip - how funny that I kept coming back to this little pattern stand and thinking "there's something familiar about these" and only putting 2 and 2 together when we got talking! It's great to put a face to a name I emailed so many times! Trish's patterns are in store now - we will be putting them online soon I promise!

And lastly one final note about Hoppy, the cutest bunny who lived on our hotel patio.

I ♥ Hoppy