Spring Quilt Market 2011 – Michael Miller

Michael Miller‘s super-hero themed booth was fantastic. All the reps wore capes and there was even a identity-changing phonebooth. What isn’t more fun when you are wearing a cape?

Here’s Kathy Miller holding the fabric that was the inspiration for the booth.

Kathy was wonderful to meet with. She was super knowledgeable about fabric and the industry and so interested in sharing Michael Miller’s offerings with the True Up readers.

Michael Miller was showing its fabrics by color story, rather than line. Kathy emphasized that this will allow them to keep prints that are really popular while also adding new prints into the colorways that are doing well.

The back of the Michael Miller booth showed of the “inspiration boards” behind each of the color stories. These boards were a highlight of the show — they provided insight into the creative process behind the fabrics and gave us all a glimpse into the mind of the designers.

Each color story includes some basic prints (the “Mini Mikes”), as well as coordinating novelty or larger scale prints. Kathy walked me through each colorway:

“Cocoa Berry,” a combination of chocolate brown and brights:

I am really digging this pencil check:

Here is the “Lagoon” color story, a combination of teal and chartreuse:

Next is Urban Grit, which, as you might expect, contains black and grey. There are some great grey prints in this collection that echoes the grey trend we saw throughout quilt market.

Check out “Knitmare on Elm Street,” a gruesome tableu of knitting gone awry:

“Orchid and Grey” is next, a lovely combination of lavender and grey.

This girly owl print was darling:

“It’s a Boy Thing” focuses on light blue, yellow, and greys (more grey!).

There are some great novelty prints, including the bicycles and animals below:

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The next color story, “It’s a Girl Thing,” includes many of the same prints in coral, pink, and grey. The damask prints are particularly lovely.

I love the bicycles in pink — girls like bikes too!’

Michael Miller has had “Aqua and Red” prints for some time, but Kathy said this is a very strong color story for them and they have added prints because of the high demand.

“Citron and Grey” seems to be popping up everywhere in blogland, and

the next color story captures that trend perfectly.

I was really drawn to the Ikat prints. Although Ikat has been a big trend in home dec and interior design, I haven’t seen many quilting cottons with these patterns.

Additional Ikat prints are available in the “Sorbet” color story, a mix of aqua, coral, pink, and grey.

Next is the “Retro” color story, a classic mix of royal, red, and yellow.

Finally, is “Rouge et Noir,” a dramatic mix of red, pink, black, and white.

As Melissa noted, grey is huge right now as a neutral and Michael Miller has a lot to offer in this hot neutral. I love the way the fabrics are organized by color story and I think this reflects the way a lot of us use the fabric in our stashes — mixing and matching prints from different collections into a cohesive palette.

In the next post I will show you all the Michael Miller novelty print collections and designer collections.