East Cobb Quilt Show

We had a wonderful time manning our vendor booth at the East Cobb Quilt Show this weekend in Marietta, GA (metro Atlanta). Here are some photos:

This is the show floor with the vendors on the second floor overlooking the quilts. Perfect setup!


This is Bill being a very good booth Assistant Manager...


Our booth...


The rust dyed wall quilt is by Frances Arnold and the four needle felted and embroidered pieces are by Mary Ann Mauney.

The Booth

We had a wonderful time at the Pensacola Quilt show this weekend, talking to longtime friends, visiting with folks and enjoying the quilts.

Our booth was large and spacious (12' x 17' !) and very comfortable...



"The Man", Bill, was in charge of the booth for the most part and set everything up beautifully.

We have plenty of photos of the show quilts, but I still need to get permission from the makers to put them on my blog.

Vendor Booth Days

We need a little more color here...

We have been enjoying the Cotton Patch Quilt Show (see previous blog for a link) this weekend just south of Athens, GA at the Oconee County Civic Center. The show floor plan is wonderful and we have plenty of fine vendors. I have three quilts (no new ones to post) and a post card in the show and have won three Honorable Mention awards.

Our hand-dyed fabric booth is doing very well. All of Bill's wonderful booth inventions (stands, wall, displays) look great, and his Ruler Racks are selling like hotcakes.

Yardage is selling well, but the best seller has been the basket of hand-dyed scraps, 5" x 18", or the equivalent, for 75 cents per piece. I dyed yardage pieces with an extra 8" or so of fabric so that I could have 5" wide cuts plus string cuts from each piece. The string cuts are for string quilt class kits and for my own quilts this year. It seems to have been a good plan.

One of the other vendors calls that circle piece on the wall the "fried egg" fabric. haha The tiny rolling "desk" we found at the Habitat for Humanity thrift store is working perfectly in the booth.

Here is the next big idea for our booth from my hubby, Bill...

This rust-dyed piece is called "Clam Baked in '68". Isn't it great?! He's placed it onto a frame board and will frame it when his idea jells. Can you tell he's a vintage hippie? He doesn't like the term "old hippie". ;-) He is a social butterfly and is in his element working the booth with me this weekend. More on the show later...

Vendor Booth Prep for Tomorrow

Tomorrow is set-up day for vendor booths at the Cotton Patch Quilt Show, and we have been hard at work for weeks preparing for it. Bill has been very busy making racks and stands for merchandise. Ours is mainly a Hand-Dyed Fabric booth, but we will have several other items for sale: greeting cards, postcards, ruler racks and felted wool pincushions. Here's what the house looks like this afternoon...

This ruler rack will be hanging on the wall above the stand.

These quilt tops will hang on the booth wall; each of them uses a mixture of commercial and hand-dyed fabrics.

The pincusions have been drying in the studio, but these are ready to go...

The multi-colored yardage is so beautiful that I hate to fold it up. I'll find a place to hang it on the hanging racks.

We found this wonderful rolling stand (left) at the Habitat for Humanity thrift store. Bill painted it up to match the other booth components and now it will serve as our check-out stand. The basket on the right has a huge assortment of scraps for 75 cents each.

This rack was a nightstand, but Bill altered it by attaching a pole and "tree" on top (not shown) which will display quarter-yards of fabric. The fabric will hang down over the nightstand and will make viewing much easier. The drawer and baskets will hold fat quarters and pincushions. If you've never seen some of my display racks, here's an unfinished one from months ago. Bill has recently painted this one and attached my booth sign to the top...

...and this is how all of the hanging racks will display fabric. Whew! We're almost ready. Wish us luck!

Countdown...6 Days

Six days from now the Cotton Patch Quilt Show will have its awards night, and I will open my first major hand-dyed fabric vendor booth. It has been an incredibly busy month, but I've enjoyed it a great deal. Here are some photos from around the house/production floor...

This is the fold and price stack in the dining room.

Stacks of cool stuff...yards, half-yards, and multiple yards stacks, plus Bill's newly designed Ruler Racks and a beautiful sign he ordered for me.

More yards and half-yards.

Multi-yard pieces, quarter-yards and some fat-quarters.

These are some of the first wool felted pincushions for the show. I visited Main Street Yarns yesterday (I love that place!) for more lovely wool roving. Now let's head out to the garage/dye studio...

This is a 2-yard piece with the yellow at one end and the blue at the opposite end. Can't wait to rinse this one. This is low-water immersion dyeing with Procion MX dyes.

This doesn't look like much yet, but underneath the top layer is another mixed sunrise colored fabric. I layer my fabrics in the dye bath to conserve time and dye. The top layers will absorb the extra dye and will be a lighter color. The benefits are two-fold: more dyed fabric in the end, and less dye to wash out. Here's another dye bath where you can see the layers below...

If you'd like to know more about low-water immersion dyeing and dyeing in layers, check out Ann Johnston's book, Color by Accident.

It's time to create...