Last weekend we took our twice-annual trip up north to attend our favorite buyer’s market in Portland Oregon, do a couple of classes, buy lots of fabrics, and then after the show, head up to Seattle for a short visit with our daughter, son-in-law and new grandson.
We had a great trip although it was exhausting. We’re talking about maybe flying up next time to cut down a bit on the time we need to be away from here. Thanks to all our customers who waited an extra day or two to get their orders shipped! We know you won’t be disappointed in the new lines we saw and ordered for summer and fall delivery.
This is going to be a long post, so here we go…
We arrived in Portland on Thursday afternoon, checked into the Marriott Courtyard downtown, then had a nice dinner and visit with Cindy’s sister and brother-in-law who live across the river in Vancouver Washington. After dropping them off at home and visiting a little more while being repeatedly molested by their two hyper-active Jack Russell terriers, we headed back to the hotel and settled in. The beds were real comfortable, the room was nice, large and clean, the shower worked really well and the staff was really nice and helpful. About all you can ask for in a good hotel.
Friday morning we got up early and drove a few miles over to the Crowne Plaza hotel where all the classes were going to be held. We got there plenty early, so after breakfast we unloaded Cindy’s sewing machine and other paraphernalia, and went to the ballroom areas to find her classes.
While Cindy was getting set up for her class, I went next door to another room
Shelly Figueroa
where Shelly Figueroa was preparing to teach a class on making clothing for little kids. We’ve recently started selling Shelly’s patterns, and have made a kit out of her Mary Go Round dress pattern using Maywood’s Dab of Jazz fabrics. (picture at right) We love this little reversible dress, and it’s been pretty popular on our website. We had a really nice chat with Shelly, and got to see a couple of her new patterns. Look for a new girl’s jumper kit using her pattern really soon on our website. We’ll also be introducing a couple of her other patterns in the web store in the next week or so, including a neat pattern for a boy’s hoodie and beach short combo. Thanks for taking time out of your busy pre-class prep time to visit with us, Shelly!
Back in the other classroom, I got to meet Helene Knott, who designs the fantastic little vegetable-cat block patterns we recently put up on the pattern section of our web store. Helene is another great designer, and Cindy was taking a class on making her “Yammy Cat” block. Cindy’s going to write about her classes and experiences on Friday, so we’ll leave that for her post.
After Cindy got settled in, I jumped on the shuttle bus out to the warehouse to start shopping and meeting with our reps. Friday is the day to pick up extra in-stock and current merchandise at the show, and Saturday is the day to see all the new upcoming products. I spent a few hours wandering around the warehouse, talking with our rep, picking up things on our shopping list that we’d take home with us and avoid paying shipping charges on.
We got some extra supplies of patterns, like the entire 12-pattern Garden Patch Cats series by Helene Knott, a couple of other new patterns, restocked on a few fabrics we were short on. I also picked up a couple of new Daiwabo Taupe designs to expand our line a bit and a few new patterns that would work well with them. We also now have access to the entire line of beautiful Fabric Freedom soft fair-trade India hand-dyes, so we picked up 6 new shades of those, mostly in purples and blues to round out our selection.
I also spent some time looking at the new Serenity Daiwabo Taupes that are coming out this spring. They are gorgeous! So nice in fact that we’ve ordered all 33 of the new designs. When they arrive, this will bring our selection of these wonderful Japanese prints to over 65. Those of you who love the Daiwabos are not going to be disappointed in the new designs, they just keep getting prettier every year while continuing to blend nicely with the older prints.
Cindy relaxes after an intense day of sewing
Well, at the end of the day I headed back over to where Cindy’s second class was just finishing up, and popped in to see what was happening. She was making great progress on a very complicated table runner that she started in her second class, also given by Helene. I sat in the hotel lobby and used their wireless connection to catch up on emails and check orders while Cindy finished up. When she was ready, we headed back to our hotel to relax a bit, then had a nice dinner downstairs in the hotel’s bistro. It was a nice restaurant on the street and it was fun watching the trollies roll by while we ate. It’s been awhile since we spent time in any central city, and it was kind of a fun change.
Saturday, we headed out to the warehouse and got started early looking at
Cindy with Jeremy of Avlyn
fabrics for future sales in our web store. Our first stop was with Jeremy Jeffries, VP of Avlyn fabrics. We’ve heard a lot of good things about Avlyn, and wanted to look at their new lines, in particular some of their new batiks and hand-dyes.
We had a great time talking with Jeremy. He is super-knowledgeable about fabric manufacturing and fabric dying and gave us a great refresher course on those subjects while we were talking and looking. Avlyn has really high-quality fabrics, which is all that we’re buying these days. We’ve gotten a couple of lines in the past that were lower quality fabrics and we can really tell the difference, so if it isn’t the best, it isn’t showing up in our store, no more! I want to get a recap of our conversation on fabric differences, dyes and quality and as soon as I do, I’ll publish a post just on that subject, because it’s information everyone who uses fabrics should have.
Anyway, we bought a couple of new batik lines from Avlyn, including Karen Combs’ not yet released beautiful and unique new versions of her gradient-dyed batiks, which are in brighter colors than the first set. We have some kit ideas using these and some wonderful new designs by Karen. We are also going to be doing a fabulous new southwestern batik quilt kit, shown behind Cindy and Jeremy in the picture, and we also picked up a couple of cute new novelty fabrics from Avlyn. We’re really looking forward to our new relationship with Avlyn!
At that point we hooked up with our rep Lynn Kraus, who is also one of our favorite pattern designers, and headed over to look at some new fabrics from another new-to-us supplier, Elizabeth’s Studio fabrics. We had a great time looking through their new offerings and selecting a few for our store. We had previously ordered a new Russian-influenced line from ES and are anxiously awaiting it’s arrival. This is a beautiful line on black backgrounds with metallic bright colors and will be a unique addition. We also have several fabric sets coming from Elizabeth that are really amusing, so stay tuned!
Cindy and Don surround the Taphouses
Then, it was off to meet with our favorite supplier, Bryan Taphouse, owner of Fabric Freedom of London. We’re one of Bryan’s largest USA retailers, and it’s always fun to see what he and his designers have cooked up for the next season. We’re always amazed by the quality and new designs they come up with as well as the new variations on older designs. This time was no exception. We saw some things that just knocked our socks off, including a sequel to a new line that we haven’t even gotten in yet but is expected soon. Fabric Freedom is also doing another classy William Morris line this summer as well as a couple of new lines in shades of single colors, all of which, of course, we ordered.
This spring, Bryan brought with him his lovely wife Jackie, combining a little fun family vacation with the business trip. We had a great time chatting, and we wish them the best on their remaining travels in the USA this spring!
After looking at, and ordering most of the new lines from Fabric Freedom, we spent some more time making final purchases and topping up our cart with a few more patterns and books, then it was time to say goodbye to our friends in Portland, check out, load up the car and hit the road for Seattle.
A few hours later, we arrived at our daughter’s house outside Seattle, just about in time for dinner. After a nice dinner we settled in for a great visit with the family and especially our little six-month-old grandson. He’s getting so cute! And he’s almost ready to start crawling.
Sunday morning, after breakfast and another visit, we rolled for home, heading down the east side of the mountains, Arriving home on Monday afternoon, we spent the evening Monday and all day Tuesday cutting and packing out all the orders that had stacked up during our absence. We got everything out in Tuesday’s mail, though I don’t think our postmaster appreciated me arriving at his window 20 minutes before closing with that many packages to process.
Anyway, it was a good trip, we had a great time and selected a lot of really nice super-high quality goods for our store. Thanks again for your patience to those people who had to wait a day or two extra to get their orders. We promise not to do it again until next fall!
