Yeah, More Market

 

At the risk of making you throw something at us, we do have a few more things to tell you about Spring Market in Kansas City earlier this month. Y’see, if these things didn’t impress us, we wouldn’t want to tell you about them. And there was soooo much that impressed us.

We briefly mentioned the wonderful Tula Pink in our last post, and said she had a story behind her Nightshade collection. But we didn’t link to the story, and you really have to read it to see how uber-creative Ms. Pink really is. Tula’s non-traditional Halloween fabric is missing the Candy Corn Connection, but it has great prints for all year, especially for the Goth teenagers in your life. The line came out on the shelves just last month, and right on its heels is her lighter side in the form of the so-fun the Birds and the Bees collection. (We just have to say that she emphasized in her Schoolhouse session that this line is NOT about sex…but quite literally, it’s about birds and bees and a few other friends thrown in. It will be on shelves soon.)

Clothworks is normally a more traditional purveyor of cloth, but it has some great new lines that appeal to the more modern crowd, including the new Penguin and Fish collection, Picnic Palls Organic. It has the familiar Penguin animals, but in a much more saturated palette.

Alexia Abegg’s Green Bee Patterns booth was very popular with her fresh, new take on quilts, bags and clothing. Alexia’s patterns sport great attention to little details that make them unique. We didn’t snag a picture, but Alexia raffled off a very cool, fully-operational vintage Singer covered with buttons. It was very fun and inspiring.  (Scott vows to keep covering his machine with stickers after seeing that. It’s almost all he talked about. Just see if it’s hard to find that machine at the service center!)

Bonnie and Camille with Moda have added orange (yay!) to their usual aqua and red palette in Marmalade, which comes out this October. And because we love that color, we couldn’t be more delighted!

Oh, and two other notable designers are showing signs of a trend to the warmer side. Ty Pennington’s new collection with Westminster/FreeSpirit had a welcome complexity and new splashes of color that we loved. And David Butler, in addition to helping his sweetie Amy show off her new line, was giving glimpses of his upcoming new Parson Gray collection on his phone. (Bit more o’ orange? Yessss!)

Liesl Gibson of Oliver + S  had some mighty fine cute stuff for kids, plus she’s also started the Straight Stitch Society,  a line of simple, scrapfriendly and fun patterns. It has an awesome manifesto  that strikes a chord with us, and we know it will with you, too. (No, really. You need to stop everything unless you’re driving and go read it.  And if you’re driving, btw, you really shouldn’t be reading this either.)

And last, but not least…the amazing team at Art Gallery Fabrics keep getting better every year.  This year they won three booth ribbons, including for the booth highlighting their first licensed designer, Bari Ackerman of BariJ.  Bari’s Lillybelle received rave reviews, as did Pat Bravo’s Summerlove. And we got a peek at some AGF upcoming lines. Let’s just say you are going to have to get a second job or sell your least favorite child, because you are going to want it all!  Both Bari and Pat will be sharing some of their creative projects in the days ahead. (Did we mention, in fact, that we have a bag project designed by Pat Bravo of Art Gallery Fabrics in our premiere issue? Just could not resist that little snippet of self-promo.)

Are we done yet? Well, not exactly. We’ve gathered some great new patterns from some new and already-loved designers, and we’ll be sharing a glimpse of those soon. Stay tuned.