Saturday I wrote to you from Quilt Market in Salt Lake City, and tonight I am writing to you from New York City. I spent today at a group of wholesale shows at the big convention center here, looking at artwork and licensed design, stationery and paper products, and furniture. I saw several artists whose designs are on fabric in our eQuilter warehouse, and posted photos of them (and their artwork) on my Facebook page.
One of those photos was of Jay Burch – Laurel Burch’s son. I have thought a lot about Laurel during, and since my trip to Bali, because it was one of her favorite places. It is hard to believe she’s been gone over 3 years now, but her joy of life continues to express itself through her art and design.
As you probably know, we’ve received over 2000 quilts donated for Japan’s tsunami/earthquake survivors, and they are being prepared for international shipment at Mission of Love in Ohio this week. One of our other important charity recipients is Doctors Without Borders. This morning before the trade show, I had a meeting at the USA headquarters of DWB here in NYC on 7th Avenue. (Near where I used to work in the fashion industry.) eQuilter is sending about $2000 per month to DWB, and that opened the door for me to have a tour of their offices, and spend time with Alexa, the Senior Development Officer for corporate relations.
I know that many of you have gone on to donate directly to DWB, after donating your 2% of purchases at eQuilter, and so today when I spoke about eQuilter and our customers, I was speaking for all of you. We know that your participation in our charity program, whether it is for DWB or Mission of Love, or our other recipients, is one of the most important reasons to shop with us. I told Alexa about the quilting community, your donations to Japan, and quilters’ sense of community and generosity. She was quite impressed, and sends you all a big THANK YOU! Your donations are helping right now in Libya, Ivory Coast, Bahrain, Japan, Haiti, Sudan, Uganda, and the list goes on.
As the flooding crisis unfolds in the US, we’ll be keeping an eye on the situation to see what we can do to help, through one of our relief organizations.
Tomorrow I’ll be visiting the Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Costume Institute, in the Metropolitan Art Museum. McQueen’s body of work was definitely wearable art, and I am anxious to see these pieces up close and personal.
Creativity comes in many forms and mediums, and the image I am sharing here is from the Stationery Show today. There was a “paper fashion show” displayed on several mannequins, and this is a closeup detail of a ruffled paper “gown” by Celeste Crockett. The mixture of several small scale motifs reminds me of a quilt, and I thought it might inspire you to mix and match some of these types of colors and patterns into your own quilted version.
Friday at lunchtime I’ll be giving the keynote at the SAQA annual conference in Denver, in the Brown Palace Hotel. The theme for the conference is “Vision”, and I’ll be sharing some of my thoughts about creating one’s own Vision. Hope to see some of you there!
