My Fall Quilt Market Experience...Eight Months Later

Firstly, I hope everyone’s continuing to stay safe and well.

Secondly, yes, in case you're wondering, Quilt Market Houston is indeed a Fall show, and the October 2019 show is indeed the Quilt Market that I attended. Why am I writing about it now? Easy. Because I forgot to write about it before (lol). I was scrolling through my Instagram in search of another unrelated post, when I came across the posts I made about Quilt Market and thought, Oh that’s right, I kinda wanted to make a blog post about this. And thus, this post was born…eight months later. Aha…haaaaa. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now that that’s out of the way…

To preface, I’d been wanting to go to Quilt Market for about four years, give or take. The main reason being that my #1 career goal is to license my work with a fabric company, and for those of you who aren’t aware, Quilt Market is basically the San Diego Comic Con of North American fabric conventions, only instead of being open to the public, it’s only open to the industry.

I wanted to go for a few reasons:

To become more familiar with the industry in general.
To observe and be inspired by all the different designers and their collections.
And last but VERY MUCH not least, to market myself and my work by showing my portfolio to different companies’ art directors.

Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three different designers that I follow and admire who were able to secure licensing contracts with fabric companies this way, and I wanted to follow in their footsteps. It also just sounded like a good time to me. I love traveling, and Houston isn’t necessarily somewhere I’d choose to go normally, so it felt like a cool opportunity and a good excuse to travel to a new city.

Preparing for Quilt Market

First of all, I spent a long time getting my portfolio up to par. I knew it had to be strong enough that when I received no’s (as I knew I would receive many), I wouldn’t assume or worry that it’s because my work isn’t strong enough. I had to be confident in it before I could take that leap, which took time (four years, to be precise).

I also spent a good amount of time creating a handmade portfolio that I would feel proud to present to people, and even had some inexpensive versions of it printed to give away to art directors. (And business cards! Can’t forget those.) I am somewhat shy and socially anxious, so the idea of networking made me super nervous, so doing everything I could to make sure that I felt confident in my work and my presentation of it was doubly important to me.

As far as getting a badge to attend Quilt Market goes, it’s actually a lot easier for independent designers than you might assume! For designers (who aren’t signed on to a fabric company yet) interested in attending, go to the Quilt Market Credential Requirements page on Quilts.com and scroll down to “Industry Professional Badges,” where you’ll see a list of five different requirement options. The good thing is, though, that they only require proof of two out of the five. When it was time to buy my badge, all I had to do was provide a link to my unique website and a PNG file of my business license, and I was approved within a day or so! Easy peasy! Phew! (And if you don’t have a business license yet, don’t worry! It’s fairly inexpensive and the process isn’t difficult or terribly time consuming. At least not in my state.) And the convention itself is only $30!

A couple of months before the market, I emailed a bunch of different companies I was interested in working with to ask if I could set up a meeting with them. I was only able to secure two meetings but was encouraged by a few others to stop by their booths and ask for a quick meeting, either in the mornings or at the end of each day, as those are the least busy times.

Attending Quilt Market

Quilt Market is a three day event, but I chose to only attend Saturday and Sunday (and reserve Monday for tourism), and I found that that was plenty of time for my purposes. I was able to book a lovely AirBnB across the road from the convention center, which was super convenient and cheaper than any of the nearby hotels. I recommend booking an Airbnb as early as possible, as they fill up fast during convention dates!

The Market puts on a bunch of different morning classes that you can choose to take or not in the hour before the main floor opens. I took an embroidery class myself, for just $10 extra from 8-9am on the first day, which was a lot of fun. The upper floor where the classes take place is a full maze, though, and I definitely got lost on my way to and from the class, haha.

My meetings with the two fabric companies I managed to secure meet times with went well. The representatives I spoke to were both super friendly, encouraging, and offered me a lot of really helpful advice. It was a little nerve-wracking, for sure, but honestly, still a lot easier than I expected it would be. It was a little harder to approach company booths I did not have set meet times with, but even that wasn’t too bad. I made sure not to interrupt anyone in the middle of speaking with a potential customer, and simply asked if I could speak with their art director and show them my work. While most did not have time to actually sit down with me and look through my portfolio, no one told me no, and they all accepted one of my portfolios to review later.

As impatient as I sometimes felt in the years leading up to this event, I’m really glad I waited to go until I did, because, as predicted, I did indeed receive many no’s. Always very kind and encouraging no’s (I’ve found this industry to be exceedingly kind overall), and all a couple of weeks after the event via email. But still. Many of them. And while I was certainly disappointed, it didn’t make me want to give up. (Well, maybe for, like, a day it did, let’s be real, haha. But come on, I’m only human.) Overall, I found the experience to be well worth the effort!

Hot tip! Don’t forget to ask for art directors’ names and business cards (or email if they don’t have cards on them). I forgot to ask a couple of people and I regret it!

In no particular order, I…

Discovered a couple of companies at Market that I wasn’t aware of before.
Got to meet one of my art buddies and fellow Skillshare teacher, Dylan Mierzwinski, in person for the first time!
Got a bunch of free fabric samples, stickers, and one really awesome patch.
Was ridiculously inspired by all of the different fabric collections, sewing projects, and of course, the gorgeous quilts.
Practiced networking and putting my work out there for people to see.
Got to travel to a new place!

And speaking of, I found Houston to be a really fun city to travel to! The food is incredible (seriously, I liked everything I ate there, you cannot go wrong), the convention center and surrounding downtown and park are lovely, and there’re a lot of fun things to do. I myself hit up the Houston Museum of Natural Science (SO MANY AWESOME DINO BONES), the Houston Zoo (my favorite zoo I’ve been to), and Space Center Houston (just so ridiculously cool).

It wasn’t smooth sailing the entire trip. I injured my foot the morning of my flight to Houston (I know, right), and had to be wheeled through the airport that night, but luckily I didn’t end up needing to rent a wheelchair the next day, and was okay hobbling around the convention floor with a foot brace. LOL. The cellular on my phone also decided to stop working, and I could only text and use GPS when I had wifi, so I ended up borrowing my sister’s phone (her and our mutual friend came with me) during the convention. (Aye yai yai.) And yet, despite all of that, and not managing to secure a licensing deal at Market, I would do it again! And in fact, in 2021, I do plan on going again!

If you managed to make it all the way to the end of this, thank you and I commend you! Haha. Please feel free to post any questions or Quilt Market stories of your own in the comments! I’d love to hear them. And to all my fellow designers hoping to go who haven’t yet had the opportunity to, I say go for it!