Update Houston

About  a quilt saturday in Houston....

This morning I had at first a good meeting with chief editor Mary Green and acquisitions editor Karen Burns. Later that morning I had a meeting with Karen Johnson about promotional activities for the book.

After that we visited a part of the quilt exhibition. We saw beautiful quilts, but we were also impressed about the way they were exhibited. The convention center is an enormous building, but it still feels comfortable. We are very anxious to know how it will be next week with the almost 50,000 visitors. These days there are only a few thousand people in the building, so it is rather quiet now.

At 12.30 Martingale had arranged a book signing and there were women queing about ten minutes before! They should have subscribed themselves online, the first 36 people got a free copy of our book.

Most copies of the book are stil on their way by boat from China to US, they will be in US in December and, we hope, in January in The Netherlands. Fifty copies of the book were, for this quilt market, sent by airplane to Houston. I still got one copy and, of course, we have a copy for Francoise.

At the book signing we met Petra Prins from Zutphen, who will be in Houston with a booth at the quilt festival

In the afternoon we visited the enormous quilt market. A wholesale business market, where shop owners can order fabrics, threads, sewing machines, rulers, books, patterns, buttons .... actually everything that quilters need to make their quilts. Here we met Ada Honders, the organiser of the  OEQC exhibition in Veldhoven.

Tomorrow my husband (Theo) and I will leave Houston for some days for a short trip in the region. The quilt market ends on Monday October 29th and the quilt festival will start at Thursday October 31th. Then we will be back in Houston en we will try to inform you again about things worth mentioning.

 Maaike

 

Houston day 4

 

Maaike with Karen Johnson from Martingale. She is the Director of Sales and Marketing.

Martingale has a very friendly Marketing Team! With a lot of ideas to promote a book, like writing a blog...

The quilt at the background is the Four Seasons Sampler!

 

I didn't get the text , so far, belonging to the pictures, but I think this is a queue/line for...

 

the book signing.

 

Have a nice day.

Françoise

 

 

Houston day 2 and 3

Day 2

In the morning we went for a walk in Downton. All kinds of skyscrapers on an actually small surface, really fascinating. In the afternoon we visited the Martingale booth. It was exciting to meet people of Martingale in person after all these years working together. I was especially pleased to meet Mary Burns, since I have had very intensive and pleasant contact by email with her. She handed me the first copy of our book and it is really marvellous!

It was fascinating to see the Market being build up. Hard to imagine that tomorrow all these crates and boxes will be an atmospheric market.

 

 

The Quilt Market and the Quilt Festival take place in the George Brown Convention Center. In front of this center is a nice park, the Discovery Green with all kinds of recreative and cultural activities. As it's mostly 25*, we like to walk and sit in this park. Tonight we met there our collegue Dutch shop owner Marina Fluit from Marina's Quiltcorner in Den Dolder. Proudly I showed her the first copy of our book and she took a picture of this very special moment.

 Day 3

At breakfast in our hotel we shared a table with two ladies. They were in Houston for quilt market as well. One of them was Jan Wass, an author specialized in Illinois Amish Quilting(janwass.com). A very special encounter!

This morning we met Mary Green, editor in chief, and Karen Burns, acquisitions editor, from Martingale. It was very nice to talk with them after all these years of e-mails and phonecalls. At ten o' clock I made a presentation- and demonstration video with Jenny and Sarah.

 

 

Two hours later I did my schoolhouse presentation for about 60 shop owners and teachers. Mary Burns introduced me and she and some other Martingale-employees showed the original quilts from the book to the audience. There were enthousiastic reactions, oh's and ah's and many pictures were taken. Two visitors did win a copy of our book as the result of a little lottery. The reactions of the audience made me feel very proud of the book!

 

 

Maaike

 

(I like to see those pictures, it gives an impression of the Market....)

Françoise

 

Houston day 1

 

Gisteren zijn we aangekomen in Houston. Op het vliegveld vroeg de douanebeambte naar het doel van onze reis. Ik antwoordde dat we naar de Quilt Market en het Quilt Festival gingen. Ze keek mee hoofdschuddend aan en vroeg wat we toch met al die quilts doen, want we maken er meer dan we kunnen gebruiken.

 

(short translation: At the airport you have immigration and when you tell them you are there for the quilt market and festival, the lady asked what we do with all the quilts)

Terwijl ze onze paspoorten en vingerafdrukken scande en foto's van onze gezichten nam, vertelde ze dat haar grootmoeder vroeger ook quilts maakte. Ze knipte rondjes uit stof, maakte daar schijfjes van en naaide die dan aan elkaar. Ik neem aan dat ze yoyo-quilts (in het Nederlands jojo-quilts) bedoelde.

(but the ladies' grandmother was also a quilter, she made yo-yo's)
 

's Middags hebben we nog een korte wandeling gemaakt in de buurt van het George R.  Brown Convention Center. Het gebouw ligt aan de rand van het centrum van de stad, dat gekenmerkt wordt door wolkenkrabbers. Maar het maakt toch ook een groene indruk, door de bomen en parken. Rond het Convention Center was al zichtbaar dat de komende dagen alles daar om quilten draait.
( a nice walk around the neigbourhood, everything is quilting during the next days)

 

Maaike Bakker

Welcome

This blog starts with this book...

 

 

I have not seen it yet (well, I know what is in there...), I have to be patience!

It will be presented at the Quilt Market, Houston.

It is full of paper-piece inspiration for all seasons.

 

If you are visiting the market go the booth of our Publisher, Martingale to see some quilts and the book.

Maaike Bakker will be there at saturday afternoon to meet you.

 

The book will be available in December 2013

We hope that you enjoy it.

 

Françoise Maarse