AQS Quiltweek Paducah ’23- the Recap

So…

now that the 2023 version of AQS Quiltweek Paducah is in the books, it’s time to talk about what went well for us and what we hope to improve upon for the next show on our calendar…

the International Quilt Market and Festival.

At left you can see how our booth looked as the Paducah show opened on Wednesday, April 26th.

Here’s some closer-up pictures of our booth-front. If it looks pretty familiar to you, its because we’ve kinda locked in on this look for the past couple of shows. we display the fabric and the patterns that go with samples on the table top on one side & then our zipper collection along with the patterns that go with the samples on that table top on the other side.

But here’s a view I don’t often share… its’ the side view of our booth. This would be where I display samples of our older patterns as well as perhaps a duplicate sample of our newest designs.

But here’s where we have struggled to solidify our setup for the past few shows… that that would be in the area BEHIND the display counter setups (where the actual work during the show takes place)! You might recall that we were SO CROWDED at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in February. That was because we brought along a 6ft long table as an experiment and it ended up taking up TOO MUCH space behind the counters (without providing us with any particular benefit). In addition, that same 6 ft table caused a few significant issues when it came to loading things into our Toyota Highlander both going to and coming home from this show! In short… the extra 6 ft table was a PAIN IN THE NECK!

For this show, we swapped that 6ft table for a much smaller 20″ X 40″ table which you can spy in the photo at right above (in dark brown) and we found that it worked beautifully for us while allowing us more personal space than we had in either Hampton, VA or Houston, TX! In addition, ALL of our kits (including the kits for our brand new Double Take pattern fit eaily on our tables to my left (behind the front-facing tables).

So in conclusion…

the 2023 version of AQS Quiltweek Paducah turned out to be an above-average show for us. Our receipts were about 15% down over last year but considering that last year’s show was the 1st in Paducah after a 2-year hiatus due to Covid shutdowns, we were very pleased with our showing! Now we have the summer off until the Houston shows at the end of October. We have a nice vacation coming up and a little jucket planned for our anniversary at the end of July where we’ll travel by train to Baltimore to see the NY Yankees play two games against the Orioles. other than that, we’ll be working on our next new design which we hope to release in early September. 🙂

And now, it’s YOUR turn!

If you have comments you’d like to share or questions you’d like to ask about this design in general or this sample in specific, please feel free to leave either or both in the space provided below.

Check out the best sewing pins with me on Pinterest, join in on discussions or show off your work in our FaceBook Group, or get your daily sewing fix on our Facebook Business Page or get behind the scenes scoops on Instagram, and be the 1st to know about new patterns, discount codes and sample sales by signing up for “Bag Making is Fun”, our bi-monthly newsletter.