Quilt Market – Sample Spree!

Whew!  What a day.

Flight #1 left Sacramento at 6:20 a.m. and arrived in Chicago around noonish.  We had a layover for about an hour and then continued on to Pittsburgh.

Our living arrangements are at the beautiful Marriott SpringHill Suites right across the street from PNC Park.  Here are some pictures from our window.

As soon as we checked in we literally dropped off our luggage and headed straight for the convention center.  Tonight was that all-important crazy event known as “Sample Spree.”  In a nutshell, it’s an opportunity for us to purchase selected product before it’s released for sale to the general public.  The doors open at 8 p.m., but the professional spree’rs (is that a word?) start lining up well before six.  When we got there it looked like this:

Oh, but that’s not even the half of it.  The gentleman to the left is the back of the line.  It goes all the way up and then makes a left turn with twice as many people more.

After about 30minutes, the line behind us looked like this:

Yea!  It’s 8:00 p.m. – doors open – everyone RUNS!

First stop?  Moda, of course!

It is so thick you can’t even see the product!  Quite literally I put my arm through about 3 bodies and just grabbed what I hoped would be a wonderful find.  After all, it’s Moda!  How wrong can you go?  There was only thing I was missing and I couldn’t find it.  Oh, I’m sure it was there, buried under 100s of people.  I just wasn’t close enough.  Fortunately I knew someone on the “inside.”  All I had to do was point to him and draw the shape of a bundle with my hands, and voila!  This came sailing over all those heads right at me!  Thanks Eric :)

MILL HOUSE INN by Fig Tree

Of course, that’s not the only thing we bought.  We also have all of these:

Jelly Cakes from Mill House Inn (you can NEVER have too much Fig Tree), Aster Manor by 3 Sisters, and Rouenneries by French General.
Bundle of Close to my Heart from Laundry Basket (GORGEOUS!)
and the Little Brown boxes are Moda’s new Sweet Box featuring “Petit Fours” (320 tasty 2-1/2” squares) from two assorted new collections.  The Sweet Box will also have a pattern for a Prairie Flower Pincushion.

There’s much more to Sample Spree.  We “pushed” our way down the aisles to see all the other offerings.  Lots of wonderful new patterns, more fabric, thread, kits and samples.

Time to head back to the hotel.  We went for a walk to see what was around us.  Here’s a few pics of downtown Pittsburg.

 

Well, we’re off to rest and refresh before tomorrow.  We’ll be meeting with Moda tomorrow and you can bet that the fabrics above are high on our list.  We’ll also be seeing Westminster and Marcus, Andover, Benartex & P&B.

We should have our giveaway details all ready for tomorrow night.  So check back in to see what fun things we have planned.