PQ 9.2 Little House on the Prairie Points

This was not the best week of quilting for me.  I was on travel for much of the week.  I was able to plan a gorgeous quilt that was going to twin size.  I managed to go to Hancocks of Paducah with that plan in hand.  And I couldn't find the right fabric.  Well, that and the fact that the twin sized quilt wants prairie points.  It would take at best guess a couple hundred prairie points.  Given that I have no idea how to sew prairie points or how to finish the binding once I put them on, making a smaller project to practice seemed like the better idea. 

I do seem to have a theme going this season.  This is an historical picture of some women and horses standing in front of a soddy, a cabin made of sod, in Nebraska.  Because, of course, prairie points make me think of Little House on the Prairie. 

The picture is printed on fabric.  It is lightly quilted with No 3 Perl Cotton.  the binding is my first attempt at continuous prairie points (OK any prairie points).  I learned many things from this.  Making miniature prairie points for a first project is not the best idea.  I have no idea how to finish/attach/do anything with the corners.  This continuous strip thing will work really well once I make it big enough to collect and hide my raw edges and once I figure out the whole corner thing.

So why prairie points for my triangles?  Because I am a rebel.  I made triangles by cutting squares. 

This quilt is part of Project Quilting Season 9.  The challenge was triangulation.  This quilt measures about 5 x 8 inches.  I quilt just outside of St Louis, MO. 

Big Ear Bunny

The Big Ear Bunny is one of the newer members of the Traveling Chicken and Monster Show.  He is very quiet so I don't know much of his story.  Like the other bunnies in the show people who love him find him, hug him and take him home.  It is a strange phenomenon.  There is very little conversation around the bunnies.  Usually a comment about how soft he is.  He hasn't told anyone his name so we call him BEeB.  If he talks to you, let me know!

He is soft and huggable.  I try to work with scraps and remnants but BEB = started from fabric on a bolt.  I was shopping with my friend B at a quilt shop.  As usual, I stopped to look at the fluffy fabric.  B saw the chenille and said "you HAVE to make something out if this."  I choked on the price but picked it up.  I didn't know who was going to emerge from it but I did know that I needed some contrasting fabric so I choked some more and bought it. 

When I got home, I started flipping through my sketch book when I found this little bunny with the big ears.  It was exactly what I needed for this bunny.  So I digitized him and stitched him up. The first draft was in beige fleece.  He was on the table when a dad put the bunny in the hands of his tiny daughter.  She hugged him and that was it.  So the Big Ear Bunny is now a staple of the the Traveling Chicken and Monster Show!

I will be listing him in the shop soon.  

The People you meet: Various Vendors

Over the past few years, we've been to festivals, cons, art shows and pure craft shows.  The audience has ranged from 100 - 100,000.  Throughout it all we have learned a lot about our process and practices.  We have taken what we learned and used it to make tweaks to our set up, products and patter.  We've observed how people interact with our displays and then experimented to see if we can improve their experience. It has been an amazing experience.  This series is an attempt to share what we've learned.  

The vendors around us have ranged from first time wet behind the ears to been there done that made more than you experts.  Upon reflecting about our various booth neighbors I realize we have developed a sort of short hand to communicate the various styles and a set of responses to them.  I've already addressed the polite professional.  You can read about that in this blog post.  Here are a few of the others. 

The Attentive Newbie. This is a first time vendor.  They are excited about their products.  They have high expectations for the day.  They make mistakes.  It is OK.  It can be fun to be next to a newbie.  Engage with them.  Show them the ropes. Let them know what they are doing right and then you can politely let them know what they are doing wrong.  For example, "I like your 7 foot tall shelf full of fragile things however it is in the aisle and you don't want customers bumping in to it and knocking it over.  Perhaps you should put it in the back corner where they can see it but won't break it." Engage with them and help them learn the ropes.  It can be a fun day and you can help some one become a better booth neighbor.


The Poacher.  There is an unwritten rule that customers passing in front of your booth are your customers.  This can be extended a wee bit if a customer on the edge of your space is looking directly at you.  You are free to address customers in your zone.  You can politely acknowledge customers on the edge who are making eye contact.  Once the customer passes outside of your zone, they are no longer your customer.  Retreating backs are NOT customers.  The poacher either stands in the aisle or in the front of their both.  They engage with customers outside of their zone.  They distract a customer who is looking at another booth.  Some poachers justify their practice because they are offering deals, raffles or prizes. They tend to be gimmicks and do not tend to appeal to customers looking for handmade even when it is a handmade seller.  An extreme poacher will follow customers into a neighboring booth.  While poachers think that this is a good marketing strategy it usually isn't.  Most of the time poaching reeks of desperation and customers can smell it. It frequently causes approaching customers to turn and walk the other way and can completely scare customers away from all of the surrounding booths.

Chasers.  While I described chasers under poaching, they deserve a special mention.  Chasing down customers and following them into other booths is bad form.  Don't do it.  A good show host will not allow chasers to continue.

Aisle Blockers.  There are several categories of blockers.

Space Blockers.   Each show has a set booth space.  You are expected to stay inside the boundaries set for you by the show host.  If you have a 10x10 space EVERYTHING needed to run your booth must fit within that 10x10 boundary.  Even if the aisle is 20 feet wide.  You need to keep your stuff inside your space.  Moving a rack or sign or wall into the aisle can be a violation of fire codes.  It is usually a pure safety hazard.  Don't do it.  With regards to your neighbors it is just plain rude.  It blocks the view of their booth from the aisle.  It interferes with airflow on hot days.  It causes traffic to move wide around the blockage and can cause customers to overlook small products in neighboring booths.

Some shows do have exceptions.  Sometimes there is a small aisle behind the booth between the rows.  Politely discuss use of this space with your backdoor neighbor.  It can be a very friendly spot to be in as long as you share fairly and play nicely.  Some shows also have a wee bit of wiggle room.  They may mark an11x11 spot for a 10x10 space.  That means that if you put your tent to the back of your spot you can slide out ONE foot in front of it.  Don't be a camel.  Stay behind the blue tape or the red line.  Keep it LOW.

Customer blockers.  Some booths are popular.  They have lots of customers and are very busy.  Customers line up to get in.  Customers watch from across the aisle.  A busy booth vendor can't do a lot about that.  They are usually too busy to notice what is going on outside the tent.  Good ones, however, encourage people to step in, do what they can to politely suggest they don't block the aisle and bring in more helpers to speed things up.  While it may be annoying to be next to the popular booth you should look on it as an opportunity.  There are a lot of people coming down your aisle and there are a lot of people in your zone while they wait to get into the booth next door.  Engage with them.  Offer shade, water for their pet, a bag to hold all their loose objects(a bag that has your contact information).  Ask what brings them to event, where they are from, what they are looking for.  Invite them in to look around while they wait.  That few seconds of engagement is an opportunity to attract their attention and get a second look.  Take advantage of it.

The other thing to do is to observe.  Are they selling something unique?  If they are selling the same things as everyone else, what are they doing to stand out?  What does their booth look like?  Watch how they engage with the customers.  You can learn a lot from them!

The one thing to never do is publicly grouse about it.  No one wants to hear you bad mouth another vendor and customers who like the busy booth are not going to jump in and buy from you because you gossip about their favorite.

Chatty Cathy Blockers.  These are the vendors who have 35 members of their family in and around their booth all day.  There are at least 5 people who don't fit in their space and who spill out to stand in front of the neighboring booths.  This is rude.  Don't allow it to happen. It is great to have support.  It is great to bring people to the show.  Do not allow them to block the aisles or other booths.  Move them in or move them out.  The end.

If you are next to the family reunion, it may take you a while to realize that they are probably not customers.  Once you do you will likely start to notice that they are smoking, drinking and allowing their children to run wild with sticky fingers all over your products.... take a deep breath is usually isn't that bad.  Now, you can politely ask them to move.  You can politely ask the vendor to ask them to move.  You can move in front of your booth to 'rearrange or straighten products" and say excuse me a lot.  Usually they will get the message and move for a bit.  Wash. Rinse.  Repeat.

If you are the recipient of familial love, please be aware of where they are.  Ask them to stay within your zone.  Encourage them to visit the rest of the show.  Tell them about the amazing artist in the next booth with the incredible art that they should buy for Great Aunt Esther.  If they don't get the hint tell them to go home and come back when you need help cleaning up!

PQ 9.1 Hometown Love: Fairplay

 I had big plans for this week.  Big Plans!

I've lived a lot of different places so I had a number of wonderful towns to choose from:  two coasts, mountains, flat lands, small towns, big cities, impressive landscapes.  However, I quickly choose a place I've never actually lived.  I've never had it on my drivers license and I've never even had a mailing address there.  But I did spend a portion of every year from the time I was eight years old until now missing at most two years.  As a kid, I was in school or in this town so I feel like I grew up there.  The town is Fairplay, Colorado.  It is deep in the heart of South Park.  (Yes, South Park is a real place.  Yes the cartoonists are from the next valley over.  Yes that is a thing.)

Having decided on the town the pattern was also a no brainer.  I was going to make delectable mountains.  I'd made a table runner a couple years ago for the PQ challenge and knew it was well within my skill set.  I could make a lot of those blocks with relative ease and could therefore go quickly.  I looked on line and saw a variation that looked liked an Irish Chain.  It was perfect.  

Now for the fabric.  I recently found a box of fabric that had been 'lost' in the move double digit years ago.  It had lots of treasures including several sets of fabric.  I remember some of them. Others, not so much.  However, there was one set that I obviously purchased in a quilt shop. Most likely a long gone shop in Fairplay.  It has gorgeous columbine and iris fabrics and coordinating purples and greens.   Combined with a white background it would be a glorious tribute to my 'hometown'.

Looking at the picture at the top of the post, you can clearly see that there aren't any iris or columbine or mountains in my quilt.  You see, the math doesn't work.  I was going to make cheater mountains.   My 9 inch blocks would turn into 8 inch half square triangles which would turn into a rectangle that would be about 12 x 8 inch mountains.  Those are are rectangles.  Sewing two of them together makes a block that is 12 x 16.  Still not a square.  And I needed squares to make rotate and make the pretty chain looking pattern.  I spent much of the week convinced that I could add some to the middle and I would get the right shape and it would all work out.  Unfortunately, adding fabric in the only direction that wouldn't disrupt the pattern merely exacerbated the problem.  So... no simple mountains for me. The only way to make the pattern is to go old school with lots of bias and half square triangles.  By the time I figured that out, it was way too late to get the size quilt I wanted to make finished in time.  And besides, I couldn't find my triangle paper without which this isn't happening!

So, I pouted for another day.  Then I drew some sketches.  But my flying geese paper was too big and I was still pouting and not going to try and make up the 5 paper piece patterns I would need.

I started looking for pictures of Fairplay.  I found one of the Sheldon Jackson Memorial Church.  It is a church that is so iconic... well I have to digress and tell another story.  You see I got married in that church.  I was living in DC.  My then fiance  (whose family laid claim to come from from that next valley over) was in Michigan and my mom was in Fairplay.  There were logistics.  I bought my dress in DC and was looking for a veil.  I found one in a small bridal consignment shop.  When I described my dress to the owner (long sleeve, cotton jacquard) for an August wedding, I got the usual response.  "You are insane.  You will sweat to death."  But I started to explain that I was getting married in a small town in Colorado called Fai.... "Fairplay." the owner replied "in that beautiful little church."  It turned out she spent time nearby and always wanted to attend a wedding in that church.  So I invited her.  She came.  It was special.  The picture above is my flower girl sitting on a bench in the beautiful garden of that beautiful church.  A church so memorable that a shop owner half a continent away knew about it.

Back to the quilt...  I started playing with a picture and finally settled upon an sketchy version.  I printed it on fabric and then hand quilted/embellished with with quilting cotton and number 5 perl cotton.  I had to add some of the beautiful flowers from the garden and a hint of the Colorado blue sky.  The binding is a tiny strip of my favorite forget-me-knot fabric, as appropriate as the iris and columbine.  My stitching leaves a lot to be desired.  We won't look at the back.  This was a great project to ease me back into quilting and hand stitching.  (It has been so long I don't even have a quilts 2017 folder.)  I am ready to see what the next challenges bring.

The quilt is approximately 7 x 10 inches.  It is printed on cotton with cotton backing and binding.  The batting is a synthetic.  It is hand quilted with cotton and perl cotton.

Project Quilting is the brain child of Kim Lapacek.  You can see all of the amazing quilts produced in response to this challenge here.