This is how I look after work most days, trying to hustle home as much fabric as possible.

I knew the minute I saw Heather Bailey’s new fabrics from Free Spirit at Quilt Market that I had to make a bag with them. Garden District is a collection of wide, heavy canvas that’s just asking to be tossed around and treated roughly. It screams, “I can take it and look good too!” I wanted a big bag to show off the large Nouvelle Rose print, so I chose Heather Bailey’s Saturday Market Bag pattern.

I’d somehow never made a Heather Bailey pattern before this, but it was just as easy to follow as I expected.  And I actually started and finished it in the same day, so I avoided some unfinished project guilt there. The pattern includes several versions of the bag, and I made option 3, without the bow or contrasting sections. I decided to go for the reversible option, so didn’t put any pockets in either. The pattern calls for lightweight canvas for an interfacing, but since I was already using heavy canvas for both the outside and lining, I left the interfacing out. And am glad I did. Another benefit of this canvas is that it’s extra wide at 58″, so even though the pattern calls for 1-1/8 yards each of outer and lining fabrics, in the canvas it only takes about 3/4 yards each.

I love how simple, pretty, and BIG it is. It’s named right, because I’m so ready to take this thing to the farmer’s market Saturday! Because I intended to use it as a shopping bag and I know I’ll be filling it to the max, I didn’t put in the optional snaps that let you contract the sides. So since I left out bows, pockets, interfacing, and snaps, the bag was a quick sew. From cutting out fabric to the last topstitching it probably took at most 4 hours.

The one cheating moment I had was to machine stitch the straps closed instead of hand sewing them. I figured since I was topstitching anyway, it wouldn’t look any worse to have a seam there.

This photo also gives you a bit of a sense of the texture of the canvas. It’s substantial weight gives it a more professional look. We’ve had the Free Spirit home dec weight sateens in the shop, but this heavy canvas is new. I’m very happy with the quality of it and I think it will be quite useful.  I’ve got a backpack in mind for my next canvas project. For now the Saturday Market bag is on display in the shop, and kits are available for this very version.

There is so much to see at market it can be a bit overwhelming. With all the appointments and to-do’s there’s not a whole lot of time for leisurely checking things out, but we try.  How could you not stop when you see all these pretty trims sorted by color?

Of course we make time to visit the booths of our favorite designers and stroke all the pretty things like the little dresses in Little Folks at Anna Maria Horner’s booth.  The entire fabric collection will be arriving at Suppose in December and we’re nearly peeing our pants with anticipation.

Heather Bailey’s booth was homey and oh so happy.

This adorable dress she made shows fabric from her new line, Nicey Jane.   I couldn’t help but harass her to start making clothing patterns.  (It’s pretty hard to find cool, well-fitting adult clothing patterns for quilt shops. In the mean time, at least there’s Built by Wendy’s patterns.)  The Nicey Jane fabric will start arriving in the shop within weeks!

Whenever I was near the Moda booth and caught a glimpse of this homemade mannequin, I got a little freaked out.  The photo would have been better but I didn’t want to get any closer.  I can only imagine what my mannequin-phobic cousin would have done had she been there.

At least there was the Moda home booth to distract us with it’s giganto learn to sew cards.  Watch out for that sword-sized needle, Mom.

More to come about market including a certain quilt I’m now obsessed with.

Whether or not we have recovered from market yet is questionable, but we are ready to show you the awesomeness.

I love these patchwork looking installations in the park across from the convention center.  Quilt Market had it’s 35th anniversary this year, and is in Houston each fall along with International Quilt Festival, so we like to think they are in honor of quilting, but I have no actual knowledge of artist Margo Sawyer’s inspiration for creating them.

The day before the exhibition floor opens is Schoolhouse Series where we shuffle around crowded halls from mini-class to mini-presentation like 7th graders. Except with way cooler teachers.

Anna Maria Horner debuted her new fabric collection, Little Folks, which is printed on luscious voile and will make the softest quilts and cutest blouses and dresses. It will come in flannel too, which will make for the most sophisticated baby quilts ever. We still can’t stop freaking out about Little Folks.

Heather Bailey also debuted her new fabric line called Nicey Jane, after her husband’s grandma. It’s gorgeous stuff. You can see one print used in her Daily Spice apron here and we’ve some shots from her booth for later.  I also learned that Heather is a fellow BYU graduate. Go cougars!

One of our most anticipated schoolhouses is always from the Kaffe Fassett Collective. Westminster is putting out prints from the Liberty Art Fabric archives done in new colorways by Kaffe. Last market we heard rumors that Liberty of London would be putting out quilting weight cottons and now we know the details. There couldn’t be a better collaboration than Liberty and Kaffe. Here Kaffe shows a quilt made with his Liberty prints.

We got to see some glorious Kaffe quilts from Australian designer and applique queen Kim McLean.

And Brandon Mabley demonstrated what, as he said, he looks like in bed. Kaffe explained that for this quilt he chose fabrics that had circular motifs in them and kept the circle theme going with snowball blocks.

We left schoolhouse pretty anxious to get to the Westminster booth to do a bunch of ordering of all our fave designers. Stay tuned for more photos from market and details on when we’ll be getting in all these pretties.  If you want to cheat you can see all of our market photos on Flickr.