T-Minus 12 Hours & Counting ....

I've spent that past 2 weeks doing my website. It went live yesterday :\ **gulp** A few friends spent some much needed time helping me debug it .. my greatest thanx to you all!1 I got some wonderful suggestions from Kristin, Judi sat for a few hours with me going over links and images .. Joy had few great suggestions and Jan told me issues with my menu, Linda also told me about issues with my menu as well .. all much needed and wanted feedback .. Thank you so much ladies.

Yesterday reg built me a stand for my totebags to be hung on .. doesn't look the greatest, but it's small and lightweight and cost us nothing .. we used the third leg from the audio pier for this with some scraps of laminate flooring! I'll hang just a few totes on there at a time so it doesn't look overwhelming and maybe some on the wall behind me along with my sign .. :D I'm just tickled to death to have it.

I learned a LOT at my first show .. let's hope that that total failure sales-wise shows some profit with the lessons that i learned. I've gotten small tent cards and printed my logo, item name and price on it .. they will be displayed on the items or beside them. I wanted to go to the dollar store yesterday while i was doing all my other running around, but didn't have any cash. i wanted to grab some hooks for this stand and also those plate easle type things .. so that way I can sort of stand up a few things to help attract attention to them. I'm going to start with the display style that I ended up with. i also picked up some bristol board, expanded my logo to fit width of board, then sliced my logo and printed it out - all 10 pages LOL .. just have to trim the white at one side and top or bottom and glue them to the bristol board :D.

I spent today debugging my site - My dad showed up and I suddenly remembered that I had totally forgotten to go to the bank bout 2 miles from my house) to get my float *aw crap!!!* So I decided to take the dog for a walk and walk to the bank (needed to deposit a check anyways) and see if Tim Horton's would sell me some fives .. you know it started to rain as i left the house :S .. but i wanted to do this in daylight and of course I would have the dog with me :D.

Well the girl at tims, was going to sell me some 5s and 10s but suddenly changed her mind .. i'm like what the ... and not to bloody happy either .. I WAS going to pay for my coffee with 2 loonies, but changed my mind and use a 20 instead.

Grumbling deprecations bout her parentage, off I trot to Macs on the way home .. the kid there gave me half of what he had in his drawer .. Bless Him!! What a sweetie - but he had no 10s.

So i stop at the store near my house (had already stopped on my way to the bank, and he had none), and asked about 10s - he had like 3, but told me to come back between 9 and 10 and he would give me what he could then .. I don't need much more .. maybe 2 more 5s and 3 10s - and i'll be good to go.

i'm ready for a nap :S Been a long time since I've walked 4 miles .. i just have to do my sign, triple check a few things and maybe do a few more coaster sets .. we'll see how I feel .. i've not sewn in 2 weeks and I'm feeling deprived ;) Judi sent me the cutest quickest pattern for a origami pouch and I might try to get 1 or 4 done tonite .. they are just made with a square of fabric and some cording :D. I do have to do some more work on my menu for the site - I think I need to replace it as it appears to give ppl various fits - from not laying out right to not even showing up :O .. maybe I'll do a flash one - but i should get some text links in there for now .. we'll have to see.

it's been a while

My site is now live Qzone Quilting. It just finished uploading as i was typing out my update.

It's been a long while since I posted here .. so much as happened in this time ..

I remember that my walking foot went KACHUNK - well that was the noise that it started to make, and it even started to dance too .. something gave way inside .. then my machines started to pull and that created problems for me too .. i got into a HUGE deep depressive funk that lasted for about 2 weeks .. course this was right after my family was so sick too .. no clue why I got into the funk, but it's gone.

Then the day of my show arrives .. gorgeous weather .. first day like that we've had practically all winter - shoudl have been my first clue. This show was such a joke! i didn't make one bloody sale - not ONE. There might have been a total of 100 ppl thru there and 75% of them were attached to the show in some shape way or form .. the rest . were friends of the club ladies that were running the show .. so they bought there stuff .. I had other vendors interested in my things, but if they didn't make their table cost, who can blame them for not buying. Most of the vendor's didn't even make their tables .. bah!

But that didn't daunt me .. rather reconfirmed some private prejudices i had relating to the ppl running the show .. and it was a qualm that I felt when I heard where it was. But that's neither here nor there .. I set my sights upon other ventures. There is a place on Ottawa street where I can rent a shelf for $12 / month - shelf measures bout 3ft wide and 12" deep and I could go up to the ceiling which would be about 3ft - which is really cool, but they've not been able to advertise and have almost shut their doors once. So i put that on the back burner until after the show this sunday ..

In the meantime, a trader's market opened up .. or at least I became aware of it .. it's been around for about a month or so now and they have some more upscale vendors in there .. I talked to the owner today and she said that they would only have one person selling one type of item at a time .. meaning - 1 quilter only, 1 jewelry vendor only, etc etc etc .. the price is really reasonable, and I've been to check it out ... nice space roomy aisles .. just down the street from the other one too :D But this one has traffic in it. THey are open on fridays, saturday and sundays for about 8 hours each day

My back went out on me too during the time up to my show .. that was a rather painful ordeal all in itself .. lost a good 3 or 4 days there dealing with the spasms and pain .. my dad ended up kidnapping me and bringing me to ER, reg grounded me from my machines for a week after the show lol - the plan was .. to get the website up .. that went well until I splashed coffee on my keyboard and didn't realize it .. discovered it went IN the keyboard when i lost my "c" key, shift key, shortcut keys (I really depend on them heavily for graphics and html) - do you have any idea what it feels like not to be able to type your name (@@) At any rate - i found a new keyboard while checking out the traders market :D :D :D so i've been going crazy doing coding and images and whatnot to get the page live .. it's uploading as i type this ..

Then tomorrow i will get some more paper products for my table, and get other stuff ready - i'm really hoping to make some sales this time so i can get my machines adjusted . yeah i know I can do them myself, but lack the confidence right now and there is a retired singer tech that will do them for $12.95 :D :D :D .. works for me (!) Maybe he will look at the 248 as well and give me a quote to fix it .. boy do I miss that machine .

I think I've covered it all .. but sure I missed a bunch of stuff .. I've had some great support from my dad, reg, kyle and my friends during my dark funk time and I am blessed for having them .. thank you Joy, Kristin, Dottie, Judi, Linda Marie, Jan, Joanna ... I think have everyone .. if i missed you .. you can nudge me in the comments

welp back to watching my upload go up .. the last thing I will send up will be the index page.

Catching up; baskets, candle mats

It's been in interesting few days. I've been going a wee bit nuts trying to figure out exactly what I'm going to do for the show coming up. I had a whack of ideas; but felt like a one-eyed cat watching 10 mouseholes. ;) I think it was just a case of nerves and just needing to settle on what items I was going to start on first.

I did find some really neat patterns and ideas on Freepatterns.com - it was just a matter of settling on what to do first. I found a really neat quilted basket there called Mexican Star Basket. It's the neatest thing - it's basically a 9 patch style 12" block that is folded and tucked at the sides to create a basket. I found a neat pattern called fancy flowers that is a traditional block so i am free to use it according to her terms and conditions. I cut out enough pieces for 5 blocks and rather outsmarted myself as I was going to cut them all out at once .. I made notes in the margin and ended up cutting wayyy more than I needed .. ah well .. I gots lots of pieces now :S I put the first one together and it looked really great.. so I started on the second one ... I realized that this was a 5 patch block - bloody hell! Well I had them cut, I was going to piece them .. i had all the sections of one block ready to put together and then I took a look and wondered how would this look without the sashings??? - welp i put it together and it looked great .. and what do you know .. i got my 9 patch block back :D :D :D I have 4 others like this but in different colourways waiting to be basted and quilted.

I decided to get going on my candle mats and pot holders to meet a challenge that one of my lists is holding. I need to have my mats done by Thursday at midnite. Well since my machine is still sick, I needed to use mum's. I've asked my friends to pray for me with this. I didn't care of they prayed, danced naked in the moonlight, or waved burning feathers .. I needed all the help I could get .. well I cleaned and oiled it this AM. heh .. only jammed once and broke a needle. I'm off to a GREAT start!!! I let it sit for the rest of the day so I could finish piecing the blocks for the baskets. I pulled it out and needed to make a bobbin .. heh .. you got it .. jammed on me again .. *Hellasigh Well I redid the bobbin again, double-checked to be sure that it was all in good working order and tried again .. so far so good .. i managed to piece 6 fans and it didn't jam again. I need to use this machine for the applique part of these fans. It's going to be a pain to have to swap machines around, but I don't have a walking foot for this machine and the speed is a wee bit tetchy for me to be wanting to quilt on it.

My house isn't as odorous, but Reg is sick and managed to get me sick as well .. oh well .. I started to hack and cough this am. I've got the itchy inside of the ear and the raw-ish throat. I'm hoping he and I start to feel better soon .. it's hard to concentrate and my temper gets frazzled more quickly right now.

But starting was the key - i'm not feeling so overwhelmed right now - matter of fact I can't wait to get a few things to the point where I can quilt them so I can see actually how they will work out. I'll be quilting stuff tomorrow .. it'll be busy for me tomorrow .. I have to go pay for my table at the show, reg's quarter finals for his bball team are tomorrow nite so I'm going - not been all year - would be nice if the coaches wife showed up .. I went to a lot of games last winter. Then that will leave me tomorrow nite and Thursday to get the candle mats done :D .. I can't wait to see how they'll turn out

Life is funny & sort of scarey too

Wow does life take a few odd turns on ya! I've been thinking about selling my quilts, and it's been on my mind more and more. We got our weekly pennysaver and I was looking in it for the retired sewing machine repair tech to come look at my 248 - he does adjustments for $12.50 .. i got 2 other machines he can adjust :D (featherweight and 15-91), when I saw this ad for Vendors Wanted. Bake and Craft sale at one of the local clubs. Well the price for the table seemed reasonable to me; $25 for 6ft, and $30 for 8 ft. So I started to think. I called the lady and talked to her, she said that she really didn't remember any quilters from last year but they had a lot of other things - so after talking to reg, my dad, and a few other friends, I've made the decision to sell my stuff.

What's great about this fair is that it's the first one after all the wedding shows in january and it's before the first huge one that is normally held in Forest Glade here .. will have to check out the show too :D So there will be a lot of people there.

I'm not going to do bed quilts for the show, but will sell them off my site - and lap quilts too, as I don't think that they will sell, but smaller items such as trivets, pot holders, table toppers, runners, smaller wall hangings, maybe some of those appliquilt blocks that are swimming around in the back of my head .. Pin cushions (not many – just a few in case) .. Coasters with a spring easter theme .. I think I’ll get Michigan Left ready to sell) .. IF I get my kitty quilt done, I'll bring that for display, maybe reg's quilt - but we'll see on that .. don't really want a law suit LOL

Since I have no experience in this, have no clue about the market, I'm more like shooting fish in a barrel or throwing a LOT of spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Worse case senario – I break even or make no money and learn a LOT :D .. $25 – $30 for the learning experience is acceptable .. For one day ..

Judy is hunting links and send them to me (Thank you Thank you Thak you)

Oh geeze all I have to do; :\ Price tags, figure out a display, get my inventory built up - I think I'm a wee bit overwhelmed right now, but know that if I take it one step at a time, I'll be okay .. finding and deciding what to make to sell will be the hardest .. oh geeze I HATE not knowing the market .. with me being an advertising / marketing grad this just goes against my grain and training LOL - I have to do business cards, do my site - I'll advertise on kijiji.com and point that towards my website for local sales .. heck even not local .. have postage :D

OH geeze .. make business cards, update my site (no graphic change, just content), take photos of my done quilts and put them in a photo album, bags for sold items, bags for the quilts?? and there is NO such thing as a cheap pillow case (!), do i have a big enough stash!??! EEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKK

** Grace has just started to run around the room screaming and shouting .. we return you to to your regularly scheduled programming - she'll be fine ;)**