To Quilt Market and back.

For my birthday Robert gave me tickets to the quilt market in Houston. He and I left on Friday not knowing really what to expect, but knowing we needed to go. We got to Houston in the afternoon and registered for the market. Bright and early on Saturday we headed out to our adventure.
The weather was wonderful, and since we are now downtowners in Augusta, we wanted to find a place downtown to eat. We found a Tex-Mex place with a second floor balcony and had dinner. The salsa and patio was wonderful and the dinner okay.

What do you call this many quilters waiting for the doors to open? I'm not sure, but I wouldn't want to be in their way.

A peek at the booths. Being with Robert, we decided to go through this event with a system. We started at the right side and went down both sides of the isle to the other end. When we got to the end of the first isle Robert said, " If we are going to go down every isle in the next two and a half days I thinks we can only spend about 30 minutes on each isle." "And we have been in this first isle for an hour and a half." Time flies when you are looking at patterns and touching fabric!

We met a quilt shop owner that knows my friend Connie who has a wool shop in Colorado. Connie, is one of the people resposible for me being a quilter.

And we met a couple of ladies that have a quilters camp retreat in Arizona. The summer one is in Flagstaff and the winter one is in Pheonix. One of them lives close to Robert's parents and they both know his Aunt Evie, from the quilt store in Sedona.

The first distributor that I talked with happened to be the guy who handles Augusta for Checkers distribution. I love small worlds.

We were so, overwhelmed and exhausted after lunch on Saturday that we found a sports bar and watched the Georgia/Florida game. It was one of the best UGA games all year. We meet a couple of guys who were in Houston (not on quilting business) who were from Savannah so we all cheered the Bulldogs on to victory.

Sunday we mapped out a better plan for all the fabric companies I wanted to talk to. So, that day was better. But, I was toast by 3:30p.m. and we went back to the hotel to rest and then out for a good Texas steak and ribs that night.

All in all the trip was a good one. I think that it has given both of us a better idea of what is ahead of us. Now we just have to sort through the 20 or 30 pounds of flyers and info that we gathered.