The World's Largest Quilt Show

Before I begin the next phase of our story, I'm going to regale you with one more tale about quilt shows. The world's largest quilt show is the International Quilt Festival in Houston.  Believe it or not, more than 61,000 quilting enthusiasts descend upon the George Brown Convention Center for a 4 day show every November.  The year we were there we were one of 546 vendors.  If you were to walk all of the aisles to see the quilts and visit the vendors you would cover nearly 8 miles.  The show promoters rent electric carts to the attendees.  Fresh off of our success at Paducah, Judy and I decided to rent a 10ft by 20ft booth there.  After all, "Festival" as it's referred to in the trade is 3 times the size of the AQS show in Paducah, so we figured we could make a lot of money there.


At the World Quilt Competition at New Hampshire  I told Pepper Cory, a who's who person in the quilting world, that we would be going to Houston.  She said to watch out for thieves.  According to Pepper, thieves work in groups there.  One low life scumbag will distract the booth owner while another one looks to steal purses and cash boxes.  Sure enough, when we got our vendor packet, there was a an entire page of tips on avoiding theft.  While I was at the show I overheard a conversation between a vendor and a security guard, the vendor's purse had been stolen.  The Security guard said that there was not much he could do, but the convention staff checks the trash cans every day for purses and wallets.  Apparently, the low life scumbags will often take the money and credit cards out of the purse and throw it in the trash.   At least she might get her purse back.


The 4 Musketeers, Judy, Virginia, Lea and I convened at the show and got the booth set up.  Judy, Virginia and I made the 2 day drive from North Carolina and Lea flew in from California.  The set up was uneventful and the show was off to a great start.  On the second day I was heading to the show, tripped over a piece of broken concrete and fell on my face.  I ended up with a deep thigh bruise and a swollen hand.  A trip to the emergency room showed nothing serious, and the next day I got to rest in our hotel room with an ice bag on my leg watching movies on HBO.


Long story short we sold a ton, far more than Paducah.  HOWEVER,  Houston, like all big cities is expensive and at the end of each day Lea and Virginia wanted to know where we were going for dinner.  And they didn't mean McDonald's.  The food was great, but with travel expenses, hotel rooms, booth rental, etc., we literally ate up all the profits and then some.  Nevertheless, I never regretted going there because it was such an amazing experience.  Plus, it was good for our "street cred" that we'd been vendors at Festival.


Back in North Carolina, an event occurred that would permanently change our lives and our business. Stay tuned.