*Sigh* That's what comes to mind when I think back to the LA Textile show this past Monday. We really thought we went in prepared for this experience. We went to LA the night before so we wouldn't have to wake up at 2 AM to drive in, which meant we'd have to leave Mila overnight for the first time. This felt like one of the hardest things i've ever done but I kept reminding myself that i'm doing this to better our future. I know eventually this had to happen but I didn't expect it to be so hard. We couldn't stop talking about her. Moving on, we woke up early enough the next morning to give us time to have breakfast before heading to the show, or so we thought. Traffic in LA is the worst. We were expected to arrive at the show right when it started without stopping for food so our plans changed and we decided to have a quicker breakfast. Luckily, we were able to find a cafe in the same building as the show. We registered, fueled up and were on our way. 

If you read my post from last week, you're aware that we are going into the show with basically nothing. We had to find everything we needed today! Fabrics, linings, elastics, buttons, etc., etc. 

The plan for the day was to shop around and also attend a couple seminars that were being offered. Just like a birthing plan, nothing goes the way you want. We didn't get to attend one seminar, we were vendor shopping from the minute we walked in to the minute it closed. I'm pretty sure we spoke with every vendor there (minus the European fabric vendors, because we are so not on that level yet, haha!). We even accidentally talked to a few people we probably didn't need to and there's nothing wrong with gaining knowledge, except it totally took time out of our day. We talked, and talked, and TALKED and still didn't cross everything off our list. I must say, we are pretty close and have some leads, but we definitely won't have everything over to our pattern maker by our deadline. I am hustling over here to get everything over to him by the end of next week because I do NOT want to hold up our launch. 

Things I learned from the show:

1. Fabric is expensive and not consistent. (One person will give you one fabric for a reasonable price but hey if you want that other color in the same fabric you need to pay this much and have it dyed and buy 1000 yards of it) 
2. It's better to buy everything you need the minute you find what you want otherwise you may as well kiss it goodbye. 
3. It's hard to find even the most basic type of fabrics in the most basic colors.
4. Colors are hard to find. (This may not make sense because of #3, but some vendors only had colors I wanted in the fabrics I didn't want and others had all the fabrics I wanted but not in the colors I wanted.)
5. It can be stressful, next time this will be a two day event for us. 

Shoutout to all the vendors for storing mini candy bars at their booths because that's what we survived off of. We ate breakfast at around 9:30 and were trying to take advantage of every minute we had at the show, (because we really had no choice) skipped lunch and didn't eat until about 6:30 maybe 7 PM at night. Seriously, it was the most exhausting day ever. We got home at around midnight and realized we had a sick baby at home, which meant a super late night for us. If that wasn't enough, I decided to take a quick impromptu trip over to San Francisco (which is about an hour and a half away, a little over 2 with traffic) to hunt down some more fabrics. Of course, I had no luck, was stuck in terrible traffic coming home and Mila was even more sick by the time I picked her up. Poor baby. But, I had to try. 

Now, i'm attached to my computer, emailing every vendor I met trying to get all the fabrics I need mailed over to me as soon as possible, while cleaning boogies and cuddling with my little sickey poo. Ahhh, I love my job! <3