Our party with Amy Butler

Quilt Market came to Portland this Spring. For those of you who don’t know about it, Quilt Market is a twice yearly sewing industry trade show, the largest of it’s kind.

We thought about having a booth, like we did a couple years back. After all, so many wonderful people would be there! That’s really the best thing about market. We get to see so many smiling faces that we normally only talk to via email.

But then we thought… why not take the money we’d spend on a booth (which is considerable) and host an awesome party at our studio instead? I mean, imagine a scale. On one side there are booth fees and furniture hauling and three days indoors in a convention center in May. On the other side, there are friends and beer and music. The choice was simple.

Then I thought, why not co-host with someone else who is awesome?

Amy Butler and CP had been working together just a wee bit, since Amy had featured some of our patterns in Blossom magazine. We decided to co-host an open studio / cocktail thing, and I’m so glad we got to do it because Amy is just about the most wonderful woman you’d ever want to meet or work with. Warm, gracious, kind, and sweet. Her husband David is pretty awesome too.

Since it’s May and Portland is the “city of roses,” we decided that would make a great theme. I thrifted a ton of adorable vintage floral granny dishes. No one used them because we ended up getting finger foods. But whatever, they looked cute.

I bought a cool vintage postcard off ebay and blew it up to poster size for the wall.

I enlisted help from Katie (lovely owner of the boutique Backtalk here in Portland, she is awesome), who helped plan and shop and decorate. She and Kristen and I spent an entire afternoon making paper chains for a backdrop. We thought it would be fun to use for photos, but mostly the party was a bit crowded for that. We also made some big tissue paper roses. It was like kindergarten craft time that day. SO relaxing.

Kenn made this wonderful gin punch (gin was kindly donated by our friends at New Deal Distillery) with lots of citrus juice, allspice dram, and ginger beer. He froze a big block of ice with rose petals in it for the bowl.

The actual roses (and other flowers) were all from my garden. That makes me feel really good for some reason. A little touch of home.

The party was PACKED, and a good time was had by all. It was fantastic to see so many friendly faces. Like the fancy tigresses:

As always when I have a party, I now want to throw more more more! Anyone want to have a craft night here at CP?