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Spring Quilt Market Recap (Friday Foto Fun #85)

This week has been a bit of a blur of catching up at my day job and a complete Quilt Market hangover!  But it's Friday and all is well in the world.  This is the 3rd Quilt Market I've attended, and the second Spring one.

For this recap, I wanted to share my thoughts and observations rather than focus on the fun things I saw.  If you want to see my photos from Quilt Market, check out this photo album on my Facebook Page.

It's been reported several times in the past that Quilt Market is shrinking and while that is true, I still think the face-to-face connections are priceless.  It's twice a year that I get to see people and network like you cannot do from behind your phone or computer.  Now I do think we are going through a period of unknown in the industry of where we all are headed.  As more things move online, is it really necessary to bring all the projects and samples to an industry trade show?  Where are we headed with digital fabric printing?  Does that just speed up the pace of fabric designs and output to the consumers in an already saturated market? Is a Quilt Market booth just part of the dues you have to pay to break into the industry?  I have so many questions and so few answers.

So let's start with the observations:

Questions with no answers:

The last rhetorical question of how we get more people into sewing to grow the industry is a fun one for me and what's prompting me to start a video blog later this year. Tentatively starting in July, I am going to do a set of 5-minute shorts about how to start quilting with the very basics, and they are geared to help beginners and seasoned quilters leapfrog some of the steep learning curves with sewing and quilting.

As for the rest of the observations and questions above, I'm not sure what's coming but we will find out together!  The one thing that digital fabric printing cannot touch is batik fabrics.  The process of making batik fabric is pretty special that I don't think it'll be able to be replicated with digital printing.  This just makes me more proud to be included in the Island Batik group of Designers.  We even took a group photo at the start of the show.

 

As for the connections that I made during Market, they are invaluable.  I feel like I made so many more connections to collaborate with in the future as well as garnered ideas for what I need to do to have my own booth one year.

For Fall, there is a new program called Threads of Success that will be going on at the same time as Fall Market.  Threads of Success is an educational program for anyone that is looking to break into the industry with the last day walking the Market show floor.  I will be in attendance and look forward to learning about all the other opportunities this industry has to offer.

What do you guys think of my thoughts?  Any questions to add?

 

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