Quilt Market 2010 - Minneapolis, MN - May 20-23
Monday - May 17 - Get up early and drive to airport for flight to Winnipeg. Fly to Winnipeg and then drive to Minnesota. Get to Bemidji, MN and spend the night.

Tuesday - May 18 - Start the Minnesota Shop Hop. Visit 7 different quilt store in west central Minnesota. Some of the great, some not so great. Spend night in Alexandria, MN

Wednesday - May 19 - Shop Hop part 2 - 7 more quilt shops and get to Minneapolis and register for Market

Thursday - May 20 - Schoolhouse and Sample Spree
Schoolhouse is a series of 15 or 30 minute session in which various pattern and fabric companies can showcase their new products. Kathleen, Ardelle and I went to about 10 different sessions to get new ideas.
Sample spree is the craziest two hours in quilting. Imagine 1500 crazed quilters, mostly store employees, given the oportunity to get the newest fabrics and patterns at a reduced price. If you get in the way, well I hope your health insurance is up to date.

Friday - Market floor opens - 250 000 square feet of quilting. There are about 500 different exhibitors from the biggest fabric compaines and distributors to the pattern company that is just starting out. We go down the 27 rows of booths and look at the products and collect information. We make a note of what we like and what we want to go back and see. This takes us only about 7 hours. That evening we go through everything that we saw and collected and decide what we want to buy or at least look at Saturday.

Saturday - We walk the entire floor again, this time buying the items that we like and picking the product that we might be interested in in the future.

Sunday - We have appointments with fabric distributors to pick some of the fabric that we want. Most of the fabric we buy we will wait for our sales rep to visit us, but there are some fabrics we love and want to get ASAP. Sunday afternoon , we drive back to Winnipeg and fly home early Monday.