Building My First Market Booth

I’m home from my first Quilt Market! I had a great time, met some wonderful people and heard some incredibly positive things about my patterns! I couldn’t possibly have asked for a better first Market experience! I have a few things that I’d like to share over the next couple of days, but since putting together my booth is where I spent the majority of my waking hours over the last few months, we’ll start with that.

When I arrived at the Convention Center in Houston on Thursday afternoon, this is what the booth looked like:

We happen to have quite the collection of vintage apple crates around our house. (We use them in almost every room for storage and display.) Those crates inspired the apple orchard theme of my booth. They were perfect for displaying my dress forms, hiding boxes and adding some character!

I went back and forth for a bit between using real apples or handmade apples. In the end, though, I loved using the handmade apples that were sewn for my booth by a few of my wonderful online and local friends. My 13-year-old daughter, Samantha, is quite the accomplished knitter (Have I mentioned that before?), and she did a beautiful job on the dozen and a half apples that decorated the two apple trees that Ray built for me.

A custom-built mini-picnic table from One Plank at A Time here in Dallas and a few pictures for the “walls” featuring my favorite little models rounded out the theme.

A few hours of putting it all together (and a little running around in Houston to gather a few things that I had overlooked), and it was all done!