I just arrived in Portland today for Quilt Market! Quilt Market is a trade show for the quilting and sewing industry to show off new fabric lines and products to shop owners and press. In addition to seeing The Fabrics (one of my favorite reasons to go!), I get to meet tons of great people who are all passionate about sewing. This may be strange for me to say as someone whose business is almost entirely online, but there is still absolutely NO replacement for meeting people face-to-face and talking shop in person. I have gotten invaluable advice, feedback and information at each Quilt Market I have attended, and this has really helped me grow my leetle business (which feels less and less "leetle" every day, actually). The other fun thing about Quilt Market this time around is that Cloud9 will be previewing Fanfare, my new line of flannels (coming in August), which I am BEYOND thrilled about, AND all of the Tsuru Geranium Dresses are here on display as well. Yay!!!

One thing that's been really fun is making things to wear on the floor when I go. Almost exactly a year ago I was stitching up the very first Washi Dress in Rashida's awesome washi tape fabric the night before I left for my first ever Quilt Market. It wasn't until I wore the dress to a Quilt Market event last spring and got so much positive feedback from everyone that I realized that maybe I should try to do a women's pattern. When I got home, I started working like crazy on it. That's where I was a year ago, pre-Washi-hype. It amazes me sometimes to think about that, in retrospect. It's a little crazy, actually, how much has happened in a year, and I have to tell you that I feel nothing but gratefulness to all of you guys, for how you received that pattern and helped make it a success.

The Washi Dress is a pretty hard act to follow, but I did make a few new things to wear to Quilt Market this year, including this cute little dress that I wanted to show you today. Melody brought some samples from her new line for Kokka, Ruby Star Polka Dot, to Camp Stitchalot a couple weeks ago, and I ended up swiping a little over a half a yard of this awesome arrow print. I've been dying over this design (and, if we must be truthful, the whole line) ever since I first saw Melody's sneak peeks on her Instagram. It's debuting at this Market, so don't worry...you will see tons of pictures of this in my Instagram feed. I'm also completely in love with the ridiculously awesome Staple Dress April made for Melody from the blue version of this print, too. Maybe Melody will wear them at the same time, and we can be twinsies. !!!

Anyway, when I realized I had just enough fabric to cut it down the middle and make a little dress out of it, I was suddenly crazy-inspired to design something super simple that would really show off the print. I wanted the lace yoke to be see-through, so I didn't line it, just bound all the edges with off white voile. There are no closures, so it just pulls on over my head, but it's roomy enough that it works. I hope this does the print justice. I also left the selvage visible at the bottom on purpose so that people could see Melody's name and the name of the line, and I la-la-LOVE how that looks! That idea was totally a brainchild of my Michigan homegirls at the last local meetup, where I started working on it. You guys are awesome for suggesting that I leave it; I'm so glad I did!

This is way more leg than I will ever probably show with this dress, ACK. Hot-cha-cha, you guys {*a little embarrassed*}. I think I will be wearing it with jeans underneath instead. What do you think? Do you love this print as much as I do?

Arrow Dress for Quilt Market

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