About Brimfield Awakening
When a former TV meteorologist and a business consultant decided to make a road trip to the Brimfield Antiques Show in Massachusetts, they had no idea they were about to go into business together just a few days later.
Kim Martucci (left) and Nisha Bouri (right) had been quilty friends ever since they met at a quilting retreat in Georgia.
Road Trip!
Eager to get up to the Brimfield Antiques Show from their DC area homes, they went armed with their wagons, rain boots, snacks, hats + cash. Any Brimfield Antiques Show pro knows to be prepared for anything — especially the weather!
The night before they were scheduled to have one more traipse through the fields to look for vintage sewing notions, machines + feedsacks, it had rained really hard. That wouldn’t slow Kim and Nisha down! Across puddles they sloshed, looking for vintage treasures.
As it would turn out, their collective noses would lead them to a jackpot. A woman had laid out several tarps across her muddy plot and on them were several open black trash bags of vintage textiles. Have you ever smelled a bag of vintage textiles before? Yeah — pretty bad. But that smell, forever going forward, would be a positive thing for the pair because it led them to quilty gold.
Inside the bags were several vintage textiles and quilt blocks. But it was two orphaned quilt blocks that caught their eye and got their heart rates pumping. These blocks literally stopped them in their tracks because they had never seen anything like them before — and immediately began imagining how they could be redesigned for English Paper Piecing (EPP).
An hour and a half later, between matzo ball soup at the Vernon Diner off I-84 in Connecticut, they were hatching their business plan on paper diner placemats. They couldn’t wait to get started on what would become Brimfield Awakening.
And Today
Brimfield Awakening began as a shared dream — and that origin story will always be at the heart of this business.
As of 2026, Kim now runs Brimfield Awakening solo. Nisha remains a dear friend and enthusiastic supporter, and the spirit of that muddy, joy-filled Brimfield discovery still shapes everything created here.
Today, Kim continues to design, teach, source textiles, and share a deep love of English Paper Piecing with a growing community of quilters across the country. What started as two friends sloshing through puddles has grown into a creative business rooted in curiosity, craftsmanship, and connection.
For allllll the details about our story — with more pictures — you can read the full blog post here!
