Quiltfest Trading day

Yes, I am doing the easiest posts first. I am not feeling too well, Susan Briscoe did try hard not to give me her cold but seems to have failed at the last minute so my brain is working worse then usual. We are lucky to have to pictures in the post as both Susan and I forgot to take any pictures on trading day. Tet nabbed my camera and saved the day.

Terri who works at the venue and has been looking after us during our stay offered us use of the screen in the lobby for the day if we could put some pictures onto a USB stick. That wasn't an offer we were going to pass on so Tet got to work and just after opening a slide show was up of the quilts in my gallery. I didn't actually manage to get to the lobby and see it, but I've heard from people who did and they seemed to like it, so ti was worth the effort. Unfortunately because I was busy on the gallery I also didn't get to meet the students from Yale Collage, the two guys in the photo. I'd have liked to have found out what sort of things they had been working on but it wasn't to be. They didn't get a chance to see the gallery during the day though I am told the did spend a lot of time watching the slide show. Maybe I should have sent some one to tell them the real thing was just in the next room :)

This next picture is of the trading hall. There were a selection of quite varied traders there. I found a few interesting things. I will be particularly interested in how the spray on glitter/sheen works. If it  sprays well and stays put it could be really useful on some of my more textured quilts. However I am not holding my breath. Glitter usually comes off on everything except what you might want it on. I would love to find out I bought the one product that doesn't but I am still a realist. Still it should be fun to play with.

Lastly, for the trading day, some pictures from the gallery. As we have discovered before turning on a longarm and starting to quilt is a very good way to summon quilters. They appear out of thin air as soon as you start quilting.  I don't mind at all, this really is the point of taking my machine on the road. I want as many people as possible to understand how the longarm quilting process works, and especially what I mean when I say all my work is free hand. Even people who are standing watching me will ask if I am following a line, have I drawn on a line, and is the machine programmed to do the pattern. I'm afraid by the end of a show the answer will usually be a question. Can you see a line? Can you see a computer and does the machine move when I am not moving it.

I really like getting requests for patterns as that is a clear way to demonstrate there is nothing set up in the machine or drawn on the cloth. This time I didn't get many requests, and a lot I did get would have taken more artistic ability than I have. One lady would have liked the Phoenix Rising quilt as an A4 sample in just quilting. To be fair, so would I, it sounds lovely. It's not something I could just draw though. Maybe I will put some outlines onto washaway before I next bring the machine out and about.

The most popular pattern for this show was feathers in the style of the centre of Greek Fossils. I guess that makes sense, but it caught me by surprise. I tried some feathered hearts (Welsh and Valentines day) and the usual sampler pieces but they weren't what people were looking for this time. I will be scanning the left over samples and putting the up fro sale on my website over the weekend.