Lone Star

The craft show this past Saturday was remarkably unsuccessful. I did it partly as a favor, figuring I'd make more money than I would staying home. That turned out to be true but not by much. It was drizzly most of the day which didn't help. I decided early on the day was not going to be about sales, but instead about opportunity. So I envisioned unknown opportunities coming to me instead. And 3 did! So we'll see how those pan out in the future.

I'll continue to sell my stuff in the museum gift shop but I won't be doing any more "shows" there. Rule 'em in, rule 'em out, right?

And next year I'm going to apply to the Clothesline Art Festival (also this weekend), Rochester's longest running art & craft show (53 years). I'm ready.

One of the nice things to happen to me Saturday was meeting a new vendor friend. We've actually met before, she was one of my first customers, but we got to know each other better Saturday because Lord knows we had time to kill.

She ordered a 5" square framed Lone Star Quilt for her husband to give her for Christmas. She wants one in navy, green and white. I usually make that quilt using the rubber stamp seen above. I stamp it multiple times, cut it apart and reassemble.

But I decided to see if I could design it with my Groove software. I did! It took forever and a day but I learned a bit and got quite proficient at some bits I'd learned previously. Now that I see it scanned up close, I see some slight inaccuracies, possibly in just the way I glued it together. But that's just my test cut, so tweaking is expected.

That block is 3" square so I'll reduce it significantly and add some stitching. (The parts I drew with black pen above, to separate the blocks, will likely be replaced with stitching.) I've envisioned myself making paper quilts of all type for years and now I know I can do it.