More news! Quilters Newsletter – my Obama Quilt is on page 32!

Can you believe it? I got a few emails from my friends Laurie in Chicago and Michelle in Philadelphia – that the Obama Quilt Show during the Inauguration is on page 32-34 of this months Quilters Newsletter! (June/July issue) What an amazing surprise to come back from market to see! I bought a copy and here are the images. I scanned the cover so if you decide to go get a copy you will know what to look for! I also received an email it is in a French Quilt magazine! Crazy!

Pictures from Market 09 – Spring in Pittsburgh

Here are 4 pix from Market. I show three Booth pictures and one of Fran – Creative Director of Clover Ind – picking the winning FREE Pattern Giveaway. I will post who won when I get the info from Gary. I know the NYC Quilter won and anther shop in Idaho. I am not sure who won the third one. O will find out and post soon.

First Market 09 - Zebra Booth Looking from the left

First Market 09 - Zebra Booth Looking straight on

First Market 09 - Zebra Booth Looking from the right

Fran from Clover draws winning tickets

Shoot for the Moon – Post market! #10

Were back and special thanks….

Okay – I am back. It is 12:30 on Sunday 5/18/09 and we just pulled in our driveway from Pittsburgh 30 minutes ago.  My head is still spinning. I was so wired up after market that I drove all the way home – 4-1/2 hours and it felt like 1/2 hour! My head kept reviewing and trying to process my first market experience.  I have to send a HUGE shout out to my dear friends from Patches (Jackie, Carolyn and Toni), and Main Street Quilting in Elkridge – near Baltimore City, and Capital Quilts of Gaithersburgh. They would all stop and give me encouragement and leads as to schmooze with at market! Thank you! Thank you!  For any of you who may visit the Baltimore Washington area you must stop in their shops! Here is a brief personal overview of each shop.

Patches in My Airy: Owned and run by Jackie is a wonderful warm place to shop for every fabric that is out on the market! Jackie has so many bolts of fabric – and it is always new and changing. The shop has a great classroom and a warm and welcoming energy. Carolyn and Toni are the best! If you are in the area it is a MUST STOP!

Main Street Quilts in Elkridge: Owned by Neicy and Dee is a smaller shop that has THE BEST selection of batiks and ASIAN Fabrics. Both Dee and Neicy are master quilters in my opinion! They are EXTREMELY Knowledgeable and Neicy is one of the best wearable artists I have ever seen. Janet ( who I have know for a long time ) and Sandra were there too. Neicy has a great color sense and is in great with adding folded accents to her garments! They are both so helpful and they have a warm inviting shop…..another MUST SEE SHOP.

Capital Quilts is a DC quilt shop that had a great selection of fabric. It is owned and operated by Susan and Gary who are  professional and spot on with knowledge. I think Capital Quilts has one of the best quilt education programs in the country.  So when you decide to check out DC you must schedule 1-2 hours at Capital.

Day One – Thursday our arrival and set up

We arrived in Pittsburgh around 3:30pm on Thursday. Set up was all day Wednesday and all day Thursday until 10 pm. Everyone in our row was set up and wondering if our space was going to be a “no show”. Nope… we strolled in at 3:30-4pm and surveyed the situation. We were not allowed to lay our own carpet. We had to pay the union help 75.00 to lay down a 10 x 10 rug an put sticky tape on the front edge. What the heck? 75.00? It took less than 5 minutes. I think I should get into the carpet laying business! So after the carpet was taped we had the whole booth up and ready for showtime in about 1 hour. I brought my own quilt posts. I made canvas full length 8 foot drapes that had all the quilts pre-hung on the canvas walls. We simple set up the poles, threaded the three canvas walls through the cross bars and POOF!…instant booth!Our neighbors where flabbergasted! We had ordered an 8 foot table – first mistake. The table was too big. We left it out. We had no where to put our computer – so we went out after set up to an Ikea and got a small stand that was great. Next time we need a small narrow table to store patterns under. We ended up just placing tons of patterns along the floor and covering them with more blue canvas. It was like a small riser. I displayed my art quilt awards and Omaba quilt in the published Obama Inaugural book.

The walls were a Navy canvas which was a great neutral background for my jewel toned quilts. The carpet was LIME green shag! It really looked awesome and was comfortable to stand on. Another shop owner/friend of mine lent me some foam squares to put under the rug for comfort – that was EXCELLENT ADVISE! Thanks Linda!

When you sign up for market they send you packets and packets of paperwork and RULES! So we were EXTREMELY careful to follow EVERY rule! Guess what? NO ONE followed any of the rules! The worst offense was: All booths must have 2 feet of clearance at the front of their booths. So that meant we had a 10 x 10 space but could only put up walls that were 8 x 10 x 8. We get there – and everyone is flush up to the aisle. So all my perfect planning of the sidewalls at 8 feet – was now wasting 2 feet. So plan B went into action. I had brought extra canvas for just such an emergency.  I made full use of the 10 foot sides which allowed me to hang 2 large quilts per wall. That was the first day. I was feeling very nervous. We stayed in a nice new Fairfield Inn hotel outside Pittsburgh about 20 minutes for 79.00 a night with a full hot breakfast included each morning. That was a great deal considering downtown hotel rooms were 249.00 per night-no breakfast!

Friday Opening Day

The best layed plans of mice and men….You know the old saying. Market opened at 9:30. We were 20 minutes away so we would leave at 7:30and get there by 7:50-8:00am and have a full 90 minutes to settle in and make last minute adjustments. We got up, showered and took the first steps toward our National debut. We sailed into the city and we were about 5 minutes away and traffic suddenly slowed and an ambulance was sounding in the distance. As cars recklessly veered right and left to clear a crooked passage for the medical bus I knew we would be delayed. I sat in the van watching the EMTs weave and then they stopped about 20 cars up. I could see their flashing lights just beyond the sea of jammed cars. Yep! It was an accident and the road closed! Here we were 5 minutes aways and at a dead stop. Okay – again plan B! I quickly semi-U turned onto a fortunate nearby exit. I turned on my GPS navigation system and hoped for the best. I had to go about 12 miles out of the way – but we made it to the convention center by about 8:45. Now with the late arrival there was NO PARKING left in the garage. Gary had to park about 6 big city blocks away from the center!

We did get into the convention center at about 9:20 just in time to set up the computer and get situated. We were located in Booth 1628 which was about dead center of the large hall. We were told by veteran exhibitors that when market opened most buyers started on the ends. That proved to be accurate. We were slow for business until about 10:00. Our first visitors were Jackie, Carolyn and Toni from Patches, quickly followed by Neicy, Dee, Janet and Sandy from Main Street Quilts. It was so nice of them to stop by early and wish us well. Jackie is my quilt shop mentor, and Neicy and Dee my agents (hooking me up with great contacts) and Carolyn was my shrink! LOL I was so nervous!

As the day progressed we had a steady stream of potential buyers. They were buyers and they had potential – but the did not realize their potential! (sigh) They listened attentively to our explanation of our product line and business intent, said thank you, took a card, scribbled a few notes and dropped our flier and card into their large totes filled with a gaggle of brochures and free giveaways. They would smile and say thank you and “we will be back”. The dreaded “we will be back”. After the 20th “We will be Back” I started imaging that they were speaking in some type of quilting code spoken only by quilt shop owners that really translated to “you have got to be kidding – we would never buy your stuff, let’s get out of here and tell them we will be back so we can escape!”.  There were a few shops that paid cash and bought 3-6 patterns. At the end of the day we had about 36.00 in our cash box. We figured we could at least eat dinner at McDonald’s!

After market closed I was very disappointed. All lookers no buyers. Everyone commented how my line was well designed and had excellent coloring. Yeah sure! They probably said that so they could get out of the booth faster. Gary has an old business friend that we met for dinner. It was nice meeting Jeff and Joyce. The day was salvaged by spending a few hours with Gary’s good friends and we had a great sushi and fish dinner. We were pretty tired. We went back to our hotel and went to bed.

I tossed and turned most of the night. I woke up two or three times in a sweat. I had several small nightmares of coming home with 36.oo and no new business. Gary was very supportive and continued to wisely say…be patient. Let’s not evaluate anything until after the whole show.

It’s a NEW Day! Saturday at Market – Day two.

What a difference a day makes – 24 little hours! Today we left even earlier and we sailed easily into the convention center.  We were there in plenty of time and once again our first warm faces of the day were Jackie and Co and then Neicy and Dee and crew. How nice is was to be so thoughtful to spend their valuable shopping time coming to check in on us! They heard me freaking out about – we had no business – only 36.00 – what’s going on? Maybe this was a mistake – and each day Dr. Carolyn would give me a shrink talk and I would go forward. Gary who is extremely wise in business was calm and supportive and kept saying be patient. Shortly after my therapy a customer approached and my support group scattered. I started talking and the next thing you know I was on a roll. I was excited and got them excited and they started buying. Gary took the time to make a wonderful order sheet. I was so excited to start getting business that I forgot to use it. I would pull the patterns or write them down to ship and I would forget something important like the customers expiration date on their credit card – or the three digit number on the back. You see we worked out a way to accept Visa/MasterCard through our paypal account that we have on our on line shop. We did that because they charge 1,000.00+ for the credit card scanner. Being novices at this we had several bumps and ended up taking information to enter on the site later when the traffic slowed down. The traffic did not slow down. All day we were writing orders, often times simultaneously. When we would get a 3 minute break Gary would start figuring out the online process. After he entered one or two he got the process down. Then he took my orders and tried to enter them. Well – I did not have expiration on one, another was missing the three digit code – and on and on. By 1:00 we mutually decided I would be the salesperson and buying advisor and I was to stay away from the order sheets! LOL! That worked just fine. Gary had to spend at least an hour contacting the shops to get more information to process the orders I wrote. Oops! You can’t be expected to be good at everything now can you? LOL! We had a great day. We went home with 15 new customers and a whole lot of hope. I guess the day before when I was shooting for the moon I misfired, but by day two was a bulls eye!

Funny Customer Story of the Day

Two young ladies approached and were clearly dressed in Amish clothing. They were very sweet and quiet. They politely asked about our patterns and our terms and I took off like a big bird. They were quilters! I enthusiastically described each block of the month and the florals. They were getting very excited. I was explaining a marketing concept to them and made reference to Baskin Robins and Dunken donuts. They were totally with me until I mentioned those things and suddenly I could see them getting a bit contemplative. So I switched to my website and talked about my site and using Google, and again, the blank stare. I see Gary in the background trying to signal me subtly that – “HELLO – These people don’t eat out at Dunkin Donuts and they do not have electricity!” – and he softly interrupts -…Deb , I am not sure if these ladies would be familiar with some of those things. The two ladies seemed very relieved and started to politely chuckle. Then – DAH! I got it! Oh yea! I was so caught up and they seemed so interested that all I saw was two quilters – not Amish ladies. I told Gary – that just proves that I do not discriminate. I take pride it not discriminating against color , gender, or religion! LOL

Closing Day – Sunday

Getting up today – we were guessing that maybe those buyers that could not get to us Saturday because we were so busy or because they were so busy might stop by and place orders. We were right. We picked up a few more stores and orders. Then Sunday afternoon the crowd thinned and we started getting approached by other vendors that wanted to represent our products for distribution. Hmmm- by this time my mind was fried. Gary and I do not want to grow too big too fast and not be able to fulfill. Also these distributors want 30% of every pattern. There is not much profit in a 9.00 patterns to give away 30%. So we are still on the fence about that – but we will stay our independent course for now until we decide that there is a ROI that makes sense in that arena. There is SO much to learn about this business!

Most Exciting things of the Day

In between the surge of customers I had a visitor. Her name is Eleanor Burns. Yep the” throw the scraps over your shoulder” TV personality who has written 10,000 books and DVDs! She spent a good 20 minutes chatting and asking questions. What a nice lady! That was fun to have someone of her background compliment my work.  Earlier in the day two ladies walked in the booth with their briefcases. They set there cases down and directly introduced themselves by name and told me they were interested in my Citystamps. I told them about each one and the plans for upcoming cities and then they told us they were from Keepsake quilting. (The largest Mail Order Catalog of Quilting supplies in the world) Okay so maybe my products do have some potential! They took the citystamp patterns and told me – you will be hearing from us. Hmmm? I sit hear wondering if that is really true! Time shall tell.

About 1-2pm after traffic was quiet slow – in walks Mark Lipinsky! (If you don’t know who he is – Google him!) He LOVED The stamps and took 4 patterns and would  like to consider putting them in his magazine. Quilters Home – OMG! He is a hoot! Once again – will this materialize? We will all see through this blog.The day went on and I continued to have owners of huge fabric companies stop in and talk to me about designer programs. By this time I was ready to pass out with hope and excitement! They all seemed sincere, and left cards. When I read the card and saw it was the owner of a huge fabric company I was shocked. I do not want to mention them in case things do not work out. IF they do – you will know right away! Again – do you think they will call and follow up? We were two booths down from Clover – the notions makers. Guess what? I may represent a few of their products and I might work with them to develop a new pressing sheet. I met the CEO, head of design and director of Field Artists. What a GREAT GROUP of folks they were! Will that pan out? Time will tell. I also had conversations with some sewing machine companies – it was amazing! A great quilt friend of mine now works for Bernina. I was so happy to see her. Her name is Elaine. Elaine is the best Bernina Educator I have ever known. Elaine was manager of a local quilt shop that has since closed and bought my patterns regularly.

I did see and greet Alex Anderson and Pokey Bolton along with the Sewing with Nancy  lady on TV. Alex and Pokey were pleasant but very busy. Mark Lipinsky and Elenor Burns were SO friendly and personable.

The market closed and we packed up and were our of the hall and out to dinner before our 4 hour ride home by 6pm. We were the last ones in and first ones out – that works well!

Funny Call home to the Kids Story of the Day

So I call home to tell the boys we are on our way and will be home by 11pm. Each of them takes the phone and tells me of the days happenings. Cole, the 12 year old, takes the phone last. I ask Cole how was Danielle, the 21 year old student we hired to sit with the boys? He said “MOM, I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything but she was awesome. When you abandon me on Thursday Danielle was so much fun, it was as good as being with you!”. LOL – LOL – LOL The things kids say! Abandon??lol

More to come

Okay I have been blogging for almost 2 hours. Enough! But now you have the 411! It will be very interesting to see what if anything materializes from these meet and greets.

Shoot for the Moon #9

[This blog is out of sync.  I will go back and continue from Shoot from the Moon #8 after Market. I will put this in sequence as I catch up with my history. I need to write this now because it is happening now. ]

Less than 24 Hours until my first National Market

It is now 2:19am on Wednesday. We leave in about 5-6 hours for Pittsburgh.  This is my 5 year mark goal – to go to National market with my patterns. I think back and it has really gone quickly. It has been a ton of work. I will be bringing 19 florals, 6 Citystamps, 2 Door hangers, 4 children’s, one chair cover, one stocking, one batter up,  12 Butterflies and 12 Birds for my first showing.  That is 56 patterns in my debut line. I think I exceeded my goal. Originally I wanted about 20-25 patterns to go to market.

So How do I feel? Well I am anxious. Think about it. I am putting out almost 5 years of work. It is like being graded on a big exam. I prepared. I worked hard. I did my homework. Is it enough to get a passing grade? Then I think about the market. It is such a bad economy. Is that bad because people won’t buy? – or is it good because many small exhibitors will not attend making me set up for more business with less competition?  Only time will tell. I also feel that I have to be courageous because if I do not do well I need to walk away from this whole concept and know that I did my best.

Am I ready? Yes – I achieved all my goals of getting 6 stamps ready. I did change my mind at the last minute and added that Beach Stamp in place of San Francisco. I think that may have been wise. Customers can see it is a series of Cities – the beach is a spin off from the stamps. I added one floral – the bleeding heart. I wanted to have some new stuff to show my existing customers. I did complete the Butterflies Series of 12/ plus BOM and as a bonus completed the In the Beginning Series. I think that has real potential.

What would I like? I would like to come back with a strong indication that this can be a viable business. I would like to hook up with a fabric company to design my own fabric line. I have been thinking about that and I want to design a line of clear jeweltone batiks with textures that would work well in my quilts. I would like to meet some of the influential quilting people and do business with them. I would like to meet customers from abroad and be invited to come lecture and speak abroad. Hey – Shoot for the Moon right?

So lets see what happens. I am going to bed to get some sleep to start a NEW day and maybe a NEW business adventure with the big boys of Quilting!

Almost forgot – I have this new floral too!

I have been going so fast – I almost forgot I finished this up too!  New floral for 2009 – Bleeding Heart.

Last minute thoughts….before Pittsburgh

Okay I have finished Chicago citystamp and I am packing up car after this last posting. I really have no idea what will happen in Pitts. Will we make enough to cover our expenses which will easily reach about 3-4,000 dollars? Will I get some National exposure? International? I do not want to have my sights set too low or high – so I guess I just won’t set any. I have put ot the call for positive energy from all my groups and guilds. If you have some good positive profitable thoughts send them my way!

What ever happens – I can feel very positive about setting a goal of creating a line of patterns and going National in 5 years. I am even a bit ahead of schedule – BIG Surprise huh? LOL! Below see the Chicago stamp. It is pretty cool in person – It is glittery and embellished.

Got to go – Guess I should pack some clothes and get the van loaded! Yip – 11:20pm and I am not packed. Good thing I am not a girl girl needing hours to chose makeup and perfect outfits! I will be wearing comfortable black Travel Sweat Suits with my Zebra Shirts – I have 2. I will also wear sneakers! I decided a few months ago – that is who I am. I need to be comfortable and in a jog suit to run about and put my best foot forward!

Maybe I will blog from the show – we will see.!

Chicago Citystamp

Oh yea- I have the In the Begining pix to show you too. I really like this one. It added some glittery trim to this too!

At The Beach Stamp

I finished this stamp yesterday. I really am happy with it. It is another stamp for the City stamp series. This one has a twist. The stamp is available with the standard type “At the Beach”, however I will be making FREE downloads at my site in the upcoming months for customers to make their own custom Beach Names! So if you have a fondness for “Ocean City” you can download the type “Ocean City” and replace the generic “At the Beach”. Isn’t that cool? My new friend Cathy from Serendipity in Delaware and I brainstormed this idea last month! By the way she has a cool shop on the Beach in Delaware. See pix below of the new stamp.

At the Beach

Shoot for the Moon #8

This is proving to be more difficult than I thought it would be to recount the whole Non-Hodgkin’s experience. It has literally made me tired. So I need to finish up this dark era and move on to how the dark period made me motivated to start writing “Shoot for the Moon”.

So I layed in bed for weeks just a wet noodle. Correction, a limp, cold wet noodle. Over the passing days life returned to my blood stream in tiny increments. One day the Doctor came in and announced – GREAT NEWS! you now have 10 white blood cells! That was a great sign. The count steadily climbed and after a few weeks I was release to go home at 88 pounds with my bag full of medications and a glimmer of hope. I went home and as the poison slowly left my body over the months toward summer and I started to become a human being again. During this time I remember eating one or two bites of steak or fish a day and chocolate milkshakes. By summer I was moving about and seeing the world in a whole different way.

Life was different. So different. I am sure it sounds cliche but it is really true that there is NO OTHER moment than the present. We need to be grateful and thoughtful. We need to do what we want to do today because there are no guarantees that you might collapse on night by your swimming pool and be basically bedridden for a year.

So the self examination began. I examined what I enjoyed doing, what felt productive and felt I needed to be doing. I also had to look at what could I phyically do now.  I was unable to volunteer for the normal activities that I had been used to like classroom mom. I had a severely compromised immune system and could not be in large crowds and around sniffling children. It took me two years to get re-immunized for all the traditional childhood diseases. (Just like an infant with shots and follow up boosters)  I asked myself – Do I miss the School room Mom gig? Ahhhh – Nope! Who wants to be organizing teacher gifts and trying to make a fun holiday party in today’s politically correct schools! Do you know you can’t celebrate Christmas or Halloween in our school? HUH! It is now “Fall Festivals” and “Winter Celebrations”. Do you know you can’t bring in cookies and cake any longer? It is all about bringing the house down with great celebrations featuring carrots and Celery! Whoopee! … and raisins if you are edgy! Please!I don’t need that – and I stopped doing it.  I am now a great supporter of that young eager mother who volunteers her time to fit within the schools handbook of rules! I send in my carrots happily and send a thank you to the room mom!

So the question was what did I love to do? I loved to do art. I loved to quilt. At the same time I do like to bring in some income so I do not feel like a total parasite to the family. That is when I started doing more quilting/designing and picked up on the idea of starting a small pattern business from my home.  Mostly during this time I rested and recuperated and tried to re-plan a NEW future. I did not know what lasting limitations the whole disease process would imprint on my newly cleansed body. I was told that everything would be damaged and compromised to some degree for ever. They said it could be up to 30% lower functioning organs etc. It is weird to be 43 years old and thinking about re-entering the world. What is your purpose? Especially once you know first hand you are SO NOT IN CONTROL of your life! Big awakening!  I think for the first 3-4 months while my head started to get stubbly with little CURLY hair follicles I was just in a haze. I do remember going to the supermarket for the first time in over a year and being AMAZED at how many new ready made products and fast foods there were.  Can you imagining just being pulled away for your everyday life and whisked away for a year? All the appointments, dates on the calendar, group commitments, daily chores, holidays, yearly commitments – were just trumped by Cancer.  It is really bizarre.The good thing is that when it happens you really do not think about all that crap that was supposidly so pressing and earth shattering the same way ever again.

more to come.

Countdown!

Today I traveled to Frederick to get more duck cloth for my booth. I have to remake a few canvas walls for my booth to insure I can utilize every inch of space possible. Our local JoAnns was out of the duck cloth in the color I needed. I got the cloth and I have set up my booth in the garage. I got my lime green shag rug that measures 10 x 10. I have the vinyl signs for the booth. This weekend I will work on placement of all of my samples.  I picked up my last printing from the printer – just have to stuff a few hundred patterns and then I will have a pretty good stock to bring to Pittsburgh.

Yesterday I finished the new Floral – Bleeding Heart. That makes 19 florals available at this point. I finished designing the Beach Stamp and I have the fabric all picked out. I will put that together tomorrow. I have the skyline done for Chicago and will work on that one Sunday. I am not sure if I will get to San Francisco before next Wed. We leave on Friday morning very early and stay through Sunday. Maybe this weekend I will snap a few shots of the booth for the blog.

Pittsburgh

Tomorrow I have a lecture in Bethesda. I really enjoy lecturing and visiting other guilds. This weekend my parents came through on their way back from Florida to NY and we stuffed over 2,000 patterns into zip lock bags getting ready for market. I am working hard to get all my ducks in a row for Market. I am doing inventory and making up ample amounts of patterns to bring. I pick up my carpet for the booth on Wednesday and will set op the booth in my garage for a test run. I have my signs and business cards. I have no real idea what to expect. The economy is bad – the attendance might be light – however maybe only those who really want to buy will attend. Who knows. I am very nervous about going. This is like the BIG EXAM I have be prepping for for years! Will I get just a few new customers or a good amount? Will I make good contacts? Am I am out of my league? YIKES!

At the same time I am excited to be going. It is fun to really be in the place you hoped to be in. I will give you an update. I can not believe that in less than two weks Zebra Patterns will be formally introduced to the whole USA and some other parts of the world. This may be the door I need to walk through to start teaching abroad!