Road to Quilt Market: Market-ing
Rashida Coleman-Hale, fabric designer, author, and sewist extraordinaire, joins us today for the second installment in her series of posts about her experiences debuting her new fabric collection, Tsuru, at International Quilt Market. This week, Rashida talks about coming up with the goodies she'll be giving away at the Cloud 9 booth at which she’ll be showing her new fabrics. Enjoy!
Happy Tuesday friends! It's getting closer to Quilt Market and I'm actually starting to feel some of the pressure now. *bites nails* Be cool Shida, be cool. The new strike-off's have not arrived so I've been busying myself messing around with the samples that I have at the moment. So we'll continue the wait and hope that some super miracle happens between now and QM.
Just because I don't have sample yardage doesn't meet I'm off the hook. Awhile back Michelle Engel Bencsko, Cloud 9's Design director extraordinaire, asked me if I'd like to contribute a free project for buyers and of course I was extremely happy to do so. I normally don't have difficulty coming up with quilt designs for my collections, but for some reason I just couldn't decide what to submit. It almost felt like I was afraid of my own designs, believe it or not. I'm just not sure why this typically simple task seemed so daunting to me. Here are some screen shots of what I was dealing with.
I started out with this design, thinking I would take some cues from the Graphic Motifs print. This felt so, so forced and far busier than what I normally would do. It just didn't feel like me. I think this would look great in solids perhaps, but it wasn't right for Tsuru. NEXT!
I know what the problem is! The first quilt is too big, so let's make it a nice, neat lap quilt. Yep, that's the.......*sigh*. Still not working for me. I think I may revisit this one again, though. NEXT!
Yes! Triangles! With stripes, too?! Yes? No. This one felt very tight and strict to me. I like the design, but it just felt so stiff. Survey says........eeehhhhhhh! NEXT!
What's this now??? *Angels singing* The room fills with bright beams of light, the Yankees win the World Series, I'm a size 6 and with the metabolism of a 16-year old again, and I suddenly have the ability to wiggle my nose like that lady on Bewitched and all of the quilts I want to make suddenly appear and are perfectly, beautifully quilted by Angela Walters!
This is the one! Clean lines, shows off the prints nicely, easy piecing, simple, and modern. Love! So Michelle sent it to print and this is the pretty quilt pattern that I decided on. The end. :)
But, I didn't want to just give away a quilt pattern. Quilts are fun, but one of the best things about Quilt Market is all of the awesome goodies you get to take home, right? I typically give out a postcard or business card, but I wanted to do something a little different this time. The question is what to give away?
Well, buttons of course!
They're the cute, wee 1.25-inch ones and they should be arriving on my doorstep on Friday. I can't even stand the waiting and I'm beyond excited about them!
I also ordered some cards to go with them, also sweet and wee. Two inches square, in fact. Fingers crossed that everything gets here before I leave for Houston next week. I'd hate to show you all of this pretty and end up in Houston withou...neeeeeeevermind. I'll just stop talking now. :P
See you next week!
