I’m back! Houston was exhausting, exciting, exhilarating, and extremely fun! The Riley Blake Designs booth was over the top in pink and brown with projects coming out of every corner. We had lines of people waiting to try and see someone to place an order. I hardly stepped out of the booth to enjoy and meet the many people I met for the first time at the last quilt market. We launched 8 new fabric lines and a book called “Eye Candy” because we believe that all the fabric we manufacture is eye candy to everyone who sees it. The book showcases 6 lines of fabric with 2 quilts, a project, and candy recipes for each fabric line. We’re hoping it will be a great marketing tool for the stores to sell Riley Blake Designs fabric because you can cut kits by looking at the fabric requirements that have the pictures of the fabric and you already have the project patterns. You could purchase more books to put in the kits. There’s also a 2 page layout of the fabrics with the sku numbers for ordering.
It’s pouring rain as Randy and Bret are trying to unload our 31 boxes from the van into the convention center. I have not idea how they fit everything in the van. 
This is sample spree right before the doors open and hundreds of crazy women run through the doors. We had a great time and sold lots of Riley Blake Designs fat quarter bundles and books. You can see Bret, the owner of Riley Blake Designs in the front with his sister Kim sitting next to him. Behind Bret is Toni, me, and Cindy, Bret’s wife.
Don’t you love our booth? There was pink and brown everywhere. We really showcased our Wanna Be a Cowboy line knowing that Houston would love it! And they did! Do you see our candy store. We had lollipops, candy sticks and bubble gum. Cindy had bought all the candy from our local Peppermint Place in Alpine. We put Riley Blake Design stickers on everything. I made cakes out of fabric that were on clear cake stands. We had projects with Riley Blake Designs fabrics everywhere. Toni, who is our rep in St. George made all the girls the cutest aprons. And of course, we could not have done everything we did without having someone in the background doing all the running, my husband Randy, who was always loading and unloading boxes, picking up and delivering lunches, running people to the airport, and just a great moral support.
You could see our booth from the other end of the isle. It was as sweets as they come. In fact the best comment I heard was “this makes me want to sew again.” Isn’t that great!
This is Cindy and I in our cute aprons that Toni made for us out of Wanna be a Cowboy fabric. If you look close you can see the cute necklaces Cindy’s friend made for us with our fabric in. We wore them the whole time. They are adorable.
Serendipity is the name of this quilt that I designed for our book. It’s out of Bloom and Grow and Bret, the owner of Riley Blake Designs, this is his favorite quilt. He loves the colors and the design of the quilt.
This is Hip to be Square, another design from our Eye Candy book out of All Star, a very popular boy line.
More pictures of our booth. Can you see the cake slices?
This is a much closer view at the cute cakes I made. Their pin cushions.
More pictures where you can see Sublime there on the far right.
The editor of Quilts gave me the January 2010 issue with my Sunny Delight Quilt Design. It was so exciting to see what a great job they had done in photographing my Ivy Trellis fabric collection. You’ll have to grab the issue and look. The picture below is one taken in my yard and not quite as good as the one they took inside the magazine.
The Fat Quarter Shop has picked up my quilt “Twas the night before Christmas” So many exciting things are happening and I just can’t believe that I get to be a part of this incredible fabric industry. It really is a dream come true and I love meeting all the wonderful people that have anything to do with the world of fabric.
This is the quilt hanging at work. Bret and Cindy’s youngest, Eli is my buddy today.
