I survived! Again, the Nampa Festival of the Arts was just as hot as the previous day and wore me out so much I slept late today and took another nap this afternoon. I've been jotting down events and ideas so as not to forget my impressions and I did learn a great deal of marketing techniques. If I do this again I'll need a much better way to display things as well. I was pleased that I sold a quilt, naturally, since that wasn't my goal nor my reason for being there so I hadn't expected it at all. I'll skip the people watching aspect of the entire event as that's good for an entire book except I will say this: Please ladies, for the love of Mike, put your thongs IN YOUR PANTS where they belong. They are, after all, _underwear_ and that triangle piece hugging the small of your back does NOT belong there! Okaythen.
The most bizarre thing that happened to me was this: At the last moment I snagged a table cloth I'd made years ago back when I was first learning. It was a country applique with hearts on it about 54"m square. My reason for grabbing it was to cover up my plastic pipe in the booth. Much to my amazement, that was the quilt that got me more comments and requests to commision than any other single quilt I had there. I was too embarrased to sell that to the first person who asked so I told her I'd make her one like it. You can see it here:
The other thing that really surprised me was the amount of male admirers my Bear Paw quilt drew. I swear it was like a magnet for the men and frankly, men are the last people I'd expect to willingly enter into a quilting booth but enter they did. Incidentally I did meet one man who was the quilt buyer in the family, his interest recently awakened by inheriting a couple of quilts from his Great-Grandmother. We ended up discussing the best care for those and what to do in case he decided to hang them. His wife was hanging around the outside of the booth while he was the one looking and talking quilts with me. Most unexpected but interesting. I received a lot of requests for repair, to finish piecing, where to sign up for quilting classes and if I would quilt some tops.
Repair depended upon if it was an antique. An affirmative answer received a resounding NO. Piecing depended upon the pattern. Quilting class requests were met with a "buh"? And the quilting again depended upon the quilt, pattern and size. I don't have a long arm so any fancy quilting on a king size quilt is a flat out no way.
My grand-daughter came to visit Nana on Sunday where she got her photo snapped for the newspaper (they didn't use it after all) while she was in my friend's booth trying on her new dress (chosen because it had pockets that were promptly filled with raisins, cashews and small pieces of grass from the "floor" of Nana's booth) and during her visit I kept having to retrieve pillows from their new spot where she'd decided to redecorate. Here's my little interior decorator in her new dress:
I learned that for quilts, I need a higher end show and perhaps even a regular craft show strictly for quilts or perhaps textiles. There are two accessible crafts show in this state that meet that criteria but the vendor fees are outrageously expensive in McCall and Sun Valley. I'll have to think real hard about that. For a show like this I'd need some small inexpensive items such as pot holders and such to sell more things.
There were three other vendors there that had quilts but they weren't like mine, they were panels that were tied and no quilting was done. One woman complimented me on having "real quilts". I didn't say anything but I did notice the prices on those tied panel quilts in baby blanket sizes were being sold for $80.00 each.
All in all I had a lot of fun in spite of the searing heat. I'm sure I'll remember more as I begin to sort it all out but I did so much absorbing during being "on" for hundreds of people so mentally my data banks are still pretty full.
I also highly recommend entering with a friend especially if she ends up just two booths down. That makes it ever so much fun and she and I ended up having an absolute blast with the ladies in between us selling jewelry. In fact, we all took turns watching our booths for bathroom and coffee runs.