Monday, June 23, 2014

Life After the Latest Quilt Show

It’s Monday afternoon after the West Virginia Quilt Festival and we've been home about a day. Laundry is done, suitcases unpacked. Still have to move the booth stuff in, once the road-weariness has had a chance to abate. (And if my language is a little stuffy or odd, that's a side effect of fatigue.)
Recently, I've been getting emails from Alyson Stanfield of www.ArtBizCoach.com. In her video series, 6 Tips for Improving Your Art Business, she speaks about creating ‘ecstatic encounters’ between people and your art. I've seen two such encounters at shows this year – customers who were visibly moved by a piece of my fabric. That's really gratifying and awe-inspiring. And it's the kind of feedback that makes me keep going back to shows.
That said, all the ego-enhancing experiences I've had at shows over the years don’t impact the bottom line. But, lest you think I’m planning on throwing in the towel (which is often how I feel when I get home), I’m considering how to get more buck for my bang. Another vendor who was at the show selling hand-dyed fabrics also sold commercial fabric, which accounted for 85% of her sales. And she did four times what I did in sales. What do you think: would adding select bolts of commercial fabric dilute my brand? Or enhance it?
Finally, I was thrilled to see the Dare to Dance Art Quilt Challenge hanging at the show. Here’s a picture of me with the book and some of the quilts, including mine, of course!

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

My Fast Friday Quilt

Hi all - I just posted a quilt to the Fast Friday Challenge blog. The challenge this month was to use purple, and the requirements were:
Technique:  use the colour wheel to create a specific colour arrangement ,(i.e.complementary. analogous, split complement etc.) one  that must include the colour purple.  Tell us a bit of how you decided which colours to use, and how the symbolism associated with the colour purple influenced your choice.
Here's a link: http://tinyurl.com/k3fbphn or go to www.fastfridayquilts.blogspot.com and scroll down to find the Challenge 93 label in the right panel. Here's a detail:
Thanks for looking!