Chicago Day #3 - The Show

These are photographs I took at the Chicago International Quilt Festival.  I apologize for their poor quality; I had our small point & shoot (a.k.a. crappy camera) and was limited in time. My mom and I breezed through the display quilts in less than an hour. (It was a very fast trip).


This is "Cherry Blossoms #4" by Noriko Endo.

This is "Easter Parade" by Sandy Curran.

This is "Evening Egrets" by Joanne Baeth.

This is "SHH!  She's Sleeping" by Barbara McKie.

This is "Mary's Basket of Flowers" by Mary Seymour.

This is "Hibiscus Reflections" by Barbara Barrick McKie.

This work was hung in the Saturday Night Sampler. It is by Melanie Testa.

Chicago Day #3 - The Class

Yesterday at the Chicago International Quilt Festival I was lucky enough to take Melanie Testa's Machine Quilting Sampler class.  It was every bit as good as the day before.  If you ever get the chance to take a class she teaches, take the opportunity.  She is truly a fabulous teacher.

This is Melanie's sampler for the class.  (Sorry, the photos are a little crappy.  The lighting was terrible and I only had the little point and shoot camera yesterday.)


This is my sampler made in class.


These are some close up shots of each of the different quilting types I tried.













Here is a photo of my name tag from the festival.  The bird sticker represents the "Most Studious Student" award I received an award from Melanie.  Fun, eh?


In this class I got to sew on a Bernina (I didn't write down the model number) and really liked it.  It retails for around $3200 I think. 

Did I mention yet how the machines work?  For each student in all the classes that require sewing machines, there is a nice machine provided by different dealers (I think... I guess it could be from the manufacturer, but the dealer makes more sense to me).  The dealers put out each machine for the students to use and provide some sort of an expert in the classroom throughout the day to help with any problems that may arise.  The machines are used for three days before they are packed up and given to their new owners for a highly discounted price.  I think if you are in the market for a new machine and are able to attend an event like this and try out a few different machines, you'd really get a feel for what you like.  And there's an added bonus... the discount.  Because the machines are open stock, they knock off quite a bit... today's machine, the Bernina retails for $3200 (I think) and I could have scooped it up for $2600.  It was a VERY nice machine.  Too bad I don't need to upgrade. 

To see the last few days worth of Chicago Quilt Festival blog posts, look here and here.

 I'll post a few photos I snapped of the quilts that were displayed in the quilt show on tomorrow's post. 

Chicago Day #1

My mom and I were in a class today called Quilting with Character and Charisma.  In this class we learned the techniques to make these. 

I learned some great tricks to using pigment pens to illustrate fabric.  It's fabulous the way it works.  It's pretty easy to do, too. 

We got to sew on this MemoryCraft (I think!) sewing machines by Janome.  They were awesome!  So cool to try to use another machine.  It's kind of like driving someone else's car.  Fun!

I snapped a few photos of our instructor's amazing creations.  Unfortuately, I can't share the photos with you because of copyright issues.  Within the program for the entire festival it states that they don't want you posting photos on the web.  Pam also specifically stated that we can't put them online, so I think we're out of luck.

Pam Holland taught this class.  She's a very talented lady.  So neat to learn from somebody so creative.

We also headed into downtown this evening.  We met up with Jason and my dad for some Giordanos Pizza.  Yum!  Then we took a little walk through Grant & Millenium Park to show my parents where we got engaged.

Today we're taking Small Works, Big Impact with Melanie Testa.  We're looking forward to learning something new. 

So far it's been fun.  Sorry the posts may be a bit boring due to no fun photographs. 

On the Road Again!

Jason and I are heading to Chicago. We're meeting up with my parents there tonight for the International Quilt Festival. Yippee!

I'm taking some classes I'm really excited about. I'm taking Quilting with Character & Charisma from Pam Holland. I'm enrolled in Small Works, Big Impact with Melanie Testa. I'm also really looking forward to Machine Quilting Sampler with Melanie Testa.

Can't wait to get there and get the party started!

Saturday Night Sampler

While in Chicago, Jason and I attended the Saturday Night Sampler. We learned all sorts of things. The sampler on Saturday night included 14 different exhibitors. Each exhibitor was given a table to set up their displays and there were several chairs lined up so the attendees could sit for a five minute presentation by the exhibitor. Each attendee was given a packet of handouts from each instructor so they could take notes and have a good reminder of what was presented.

A woman named Marilyn Doheny did a little lecture about Tantalizing Tango! Here are some of the displays she had at her table.
The quilt in the borders and the fan to its left were both made using the same beginning strip.

You can make butterflies using her method.

The strip in the top right of the photo is the strip that she made first. She then used the special ruler to slice it and create the quilt in the photo. Pretty cool, eh?

She was a lot of fun to listen to. It was almost like watching a really excited infomercial seller. By using her special rulers and shifting them a certain way across your already made rows, you can end up with one of these sort of quilts.

Debbie Caffrey did a little demonstration on how to do perfect & painless half-square triangles. I enjoyed her presentation and thought her method was so awesome, I bought her book Becoming A Confident Quilter: Perfect and Painless Half-Square Triangle Units and a 4" square rotary ruler. Her website can be found here.

One of the other presentations we sat through was by Darcy Berg on Painting Fabric. She did a quick demonstration on how to paint your fabric using Setacolor paint. It was a pretty neat little demonstration and I learned quite a bit. She showed us how to dilute the paint, apply it to the fabric and mentioned a few different things you can do to get a different effect. Did you know if you put salt on the fabric before you paint it, you get little spot marks? You can find her blog here.

We sat through the lecture by Nancy Brenan Daniel on how to stencil and applique quilts. It was pretty cool. It's amazing how much you can do with a stencil and get it to look like an appliqued quilt. She had an example quilt there that had been stenciled, feathered, and appliqued. Did you know pen-stitching is when you draw a dashed line along the edge of a stenciled image and it looks like you stitched it with thread? It turns out really bold. You can find her website here.

The last demonstration we watched was by Glennis Dolce. It was called the Stitched Manipulation of Pleated Shibori Ribbon. This ribbon was pretty neat. She did a demo where she made a flower out of the ribbon. It was really cool to see the way the ribbon opened up as she stitched it. You can visit her website here to see what exactly shibori is.

So that's a quick recap of one of the events we attended while in Chicago. Check back tomorrow for a website I discovered while in Chicago.

Publish your Patterns for Profit!

The last class I took at the Chicago Quilt Festival was Publish your Patterns for Profit also taught by Morna McEver Golletz, publisher and editor of Professional Quilter Magazine.

If you're interested in maybe publishing patterns in the future, read on.

This, too, was an awesome class with an overload of information. It was geared mostly towards people who have written a pattern and are looking for ways to increase their profit. I don't necessarily fall into this category, but I felt it gave me a head start so I'm not swimming in circles before I do it correctly.

One of the first major points discussed was how to grab your prospective buyer's attention. This can be done with some sort of Bonus! offer, maybe offer a hot tip for a the project. This almost always grabs the buyer's attention.

Some things that should always be included on a pattern cover:
-UPC
-Photograph of sample project
-Project Title
-Project Number or Code
-Your company name and contact information

The UPC doesn't have to be on the cover when you first start to sell items, but as your pattern business starts to grow, you will need to purchase them. You can get them at a discounted price at a place like upcexpress.com, but the part of the code that signifies who owns the UPC was sold to UPCExpress, so it doesn't point to your own company. If you want the part of the code to signify your company and not someone else, go to uc-council.org

One more thing to consider for your pattern cover is your future patterns. Do you want to create some sort of template now to use on future patterns? This will help streamline your patterns. If your logo, photograph, title, code and UPC information are always in the same spot and always done in the same font, there is no question about whether or not the same company did the different patterns. If someone buys one pattern of yours and likes it, they'll be more likely to buy another. If they can easily identify you buy your cover, it's even more likely that you'll get a repeat customer.

An interesting thing I learned in the class is that it takes $22,000 to self publish a book. Wow!

Some good resources that were given in the class were:
-uc-council.org
-Publish Your Patterns! by Nancy Restuccia. This book is apparently known in the Quilting Pattern World as the Green Book or The Bible.
-422 Tax Deductions for Business and Self-Employed Individuals by Bernard Kamaroff, CPA.
-The Creative Woman's Getting-it-all-Together-at-Home Handbook by Jean Ray Laury.
-The Basic Guide to Pricing Your Craftwork by James Dillehay.

Jason, if you read this blog post, replace the section above titled "Some good resources that were given in the class were" with "Books Jessica would like as gifts" and re-read.

Checking in...

Jason and I made it back safely from Chicago. It was about 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning before we walked through the door.

I was hoping to really write a blog last night, but it just didn't happen. My to-do list is so full that I didn't want to do any of it. Thus, I read all night and fell asleep on the couch somewhere around 10. I woke up at 3 a.m. and the light was still on and my book was flipped to the wrong page.

So, Chicago was awesome; we had a blast. I have a whole bunch of pictures and great information to share, but those will have to wait for another day. I'm still pretty sleepy, so I'm heading to bed. Don't fret; the photos from our trip will be up soon.

Live from Chicago

The trip has been awesome so far. I've learned a lot, walked a lot, and had a blast. So far, I've taken a class called Creative Thinking for your Studio and a class called Turning your Quilting Passion into Profit. Both were really awesome and I learned a lot and got a lot of great ideas forSewbot's Laboratory.

Yesterday, Jason and I walked through the exhibits. This show is even bigger than what I had imagined! We didn't even make it all the way through in 4 hours. I've picked up some fun fabrics for the Row Robin Swap that I'll have to share when we get home. I also picked up a few fun things for me. I bought a few tools I had been wanting to get. And most importantly, I got a bunch of bobbins for Meredith, my new Babylock.

Today I'm taking a class called something like Selling your Patterns for Profit. The woman teaching it is the same woman I took yesterday's Passion for Profit class from, so hopefully it will be equally as good.

Anyway, I'll be home sometime on Monday, so hopefully I'm up for writing a blog that night. If not it will be probably Tuesday night before I am. Tomorrow's favorite things has a theme, so be sure to stop in!

We're off on another adventure!

Jason and I are travelers. We love to go, go, go. We have a 2005 Pontiac Vibe just for this reason. A few weeks ago we decided to head to Chicago for the International Quilt Festival in Chicago. Today, after work, we will be hopping into Hugo, the Vibe, and cruising down the highway.

We're both totally stoked to take a road trip. We haven't done one in a while. The last one was to Arkansas for the weekend in October. Before that, our last good trip was probably last July when we went up to Minnesota!

I have a posts set up for Friday and Sunday, so check back for those. I might be able to squeeze in a few others from Chicago, but if not, have a great week and I'm sure I'll be back on Monday or Tuesday with lots of fun stuff!

Yippee!

Jason and I decided last night that we should go to the International Quilt Show in Chicago on April 17-19.

He worked it out with the boss this morning and talked to his sister, Elle. We can take the time off work to go and now have a place to stay (Thanks Elle & Kevin!)

So, we're going to drive up to Chicago for a few days and go the the quilt festival! I'm really excited about this. Since we're driving, we'll be able to go to IKEA.

We've got a lot to do before then, so wish us luck.

I love Chicago and I love quilts. This is going to be an awesome trip!

A weekend in the White City

Jason and I went to Chicago last weekend. I've been meaning to post some pictures, we've just been so busy. Sorry about that.

I've been working on building my quilt design inspiration bank. Here are the photos I took while out and about. Most of these images are from our visit to the Art Institute of Chicago, but some are from out and about.

I loved being in Chicago in the holiday season. Everyone seemed so cheery and busy. This was a photo I took while we were out wandering.

Elle (Jason's sister) made these awesome pancakes for breakfast one morning. We turned them into s'more pancakes. They were delicious! These are a few photos from our train ride there. It was an awesome experience and I can't wait to do it again.

One of our missions on this trip was to try a bunch of different foods. Here's one of the pizza places we stopped at. I love Chicago pizza!