Storming the Festival

I recently returned home from Rochester NY, a town famous for two things:

1. I was born there.

and

2. The Genesee Valley Quilt Festival.

Since they were not planning any parades in celebration of my birth 40-some odd years ago, the Quilt Fest was going to have to do for a reason to return. So a week ago I hopped in the car on a dreary afternoon and headed down the Massachusetts Turnpike, rocking out to all sorts of 80s music on the radio and generally enjoying the moments of solitude before driving boredom was sure to set in. I needn't have worried. Not an hour into my drive, the sky opened up like a car wash, the winds were insane, and hailstones started hitting my car. I couldn't see two feet in front of me. Then, stuck 8 miles between exits off the pike in either direction, my radio starts beeping the National Weather Emergency beeps that normally are reserved only for tests in the middle of Elmo's World because there is a Flipping TORNADO in the vicinity. I had about 5 minutes of sheer panic attack not knowing where the hell to put myself and the car, and just kept going because everyone else on the road was doing the same. Visions of the 30-ish quilts belonging to myself and other members of NEQDC in my car cycloning over central Massachusetts filled my head - and then it was over as soon as it began, blue skies ahead. I later found out that yes, there was an F3 (does F stand for flipping? Because it should.) tornado less than 20 miles from where I was at that moment. Well, played, mom and my other guardian angels. Well played indeed.

So, as Cary Flanagan, one of my NEQDC colleagues who joined me on the trip (although she took the wimpy way out and drove through only beautiful weather the next day) noted, I can now "say for sure that neither hail, nor rain, nor tornados will keep me" from bringing EPQD to the masses. But I must admit I hope never to have it happen in such a dramatic fashion again. And my heart goes out to all those in MA who lost their homes or worse that afternoon. It was a freakish thing and truly terrifying.

Anyhoo, on to the show! Genesee Valley Quilt Guild is a 300+ member guild and they truly know how to put on a show. Over 1000 quilts, several traveling exhibits, a fashion show, two live auctions, and my personal favorite, the Iron Quilter competition. I was chomping at the bit to participate in that one; quilters were given 5 hours to create a quilt, start to finish, including quilting, binding, embellishment, sleeve and label , and when I tell you these quilts were A-Maz-Ing I am not giving them enough credit. Holy insane talent.

New England Quilt Designers Cooperative was one of 41 vendors at the show. Terri Sontra, another NEDQC member, and I arrived a day early to do set up and I must say we did a fantabulous job. If you have read our "Strength in Numbers" article in The Quilter (shameless plug), you will recall we often refer to setting up even a double booth with all of the samples from six designers as trying to fit 10 pounds of sugar in a five pound bag, and this time was no different. Thankfully we did have another show going on in Connecticut (where member Barbara Chojnacki was doing a bang up job representing us), so this time we were down several samples and that actually was a blessing. I snapped these photos toward the end of set up:

Note "Beth's Embellishmenty Corner," where I spent much of the weekend demo-ing my favorite glue, Jewel-it, and selling it by the truckload.

The show was held in the RIT Field House and was way cool to look down on from the upper track area. See that marquee on the left? It's a little blurry, but it says "New England Quilt Designers Cooperative" - all the vendors were scrolling all weekend long. Very cool. If you wonder where the people are, well, we'll admit this was the slow day, but these photos were also taken during the fashion show, so most people were sitting at the very end of the room enjoying that event.

Despite the tornadic experience of getting there, I'm so glad we participated. Not only was it a fun show, but I learned two very important things about the women who worked the booth with me:

1. Cary Flanagan (Something Sew Fine Design) unwinds in the evening with a Port and Orange Juice cocktail which is actually quite pretty.

2. Terri Sontra (Purple Moose Designs) has as crazy a life as I do and her dog receives a pension from the state of California. Love it.

God only knows what they learned about me.

Little did I know that

Road trippin' with NEQDC

NEQDC, or New England Quilt Designers Cooperative for those of you just joining us, is packing up and moving out in just a couple of weeks as we will be vending once again at Genesee Valley Quilt Club's Quilt Festival, June 3-5 2011 at Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY. This will be our second consecutive time at the show and we are very excited. Come along as I attempt to excite you as well!





Quilt Festival is the biannual show for Genesee Valley Quilt Club, a huge club from Western NY that really knows how to put on a show. It's three full days of non stop action, including fashion shows, auctions, special lectures and exhibits, a chance to sew a pillowcase for charity, and of course about 900 billion quilts. The ladies, and I would imagine a few gentlemen, of GVQC are not only prolific in and of themselves, but they also secure travelling exhibits for show at their event, so the floor is just amazingly full of gorgeousness. I spent three days there and couldn't see it all. Granted, I was supposed to be helping in NEQDC's booth, which cut into my show viewing, but as anyone who has worked with me in the booth in the past knows, I tend to wander off and hope no one notices.

Add to all the fun the vendor shop hop. This is such a great idea and I wish more shows would adopt it. Perhaps it only works for GVQC because the vendors are so fantastic (they truly are!), but here's the deal: As you shop, save your receipts. Then head on over to the shop hop booth. Volunteers with calculators will add up your totals, and for every $100 you've spent, you get a ticket to put in a Chinese auction style basket raffle. Baskets feature products donated by the vendors, from patterns and notions to alpaca sweaters. It's truly fantastic and a win win for the vendors, the show, and the shoppers.

This year's special guests are George Siciliano, Pat Pauly, Rami Kim, and Carol Ritter-Wright. Carol will be doing a live auction with some of the proceeds to benefit Gilda's Club of Rochester, a support system for women with ovarian cancer and their families. As a daughter who lost her mom to ovarian cancer almost ten years ago, I absolutely love that I can be part of a show that supports fighters and survivors in this way.

NEDQC will be in booth 610/611 - oh yeah, we sprang for the double! - and we'd love to see you there. Myself, Terri Sontra of Purple Moose Designs, and Cary Flanagan of Something Sew Fine will be there in person. We aren't George Siciliano, but we think we are pretty awesome, so please stop by!

So did ya see it yet?????

It's likely in stores this week, so you no longer have any excuse whatsoever not to have read the quintessential article in The Quilter (April/May 2011), "Strength in Numbers".

Let's review.

This is what the cover looks like:

Bright, cheerful, screaming to be thrown into your basket at your favorite fabric store. Don't let the lack of mention of the article you are seeking out on the cover fool you, it's in there. Page 82. Did I mention that?

I so appreciate you all humoring me. But today I want to share just a little about how and why we ended up writing the article in the first place, and how it got into such a fantastic magazine, besides just plain old luck. I promise it's actually a pretty interesting story.

Last August, NEQDC was vending at Maine Quilts in Augusta ME, a fantastic show if you have never been to it, and our next door vending neighbor was the fabulously talented, incredibly funny, too darn cute and sweet for words, and let's face it 9,000 times more famous than us Jo Diggs. We got to know one another a bit and she was very impressed with us (who wouldn't be, really?) that we had taken the concept of shared vending and run with it so successfully, a concept she had never seen pursued before in the industry. She suggested that we write an article and submit it to some magazines for publication because it was a new fresh idea. We knew we had something great, but really hadn't considered that we were doing something others might be interested in learning more about. But we told her we'd do it. And when you tell Jo Diggs you are going to do something, you do it. (Here I am totally kidding. The woman is truly adorable and not fearsome in any way.)

A few weeks later my children finally went back to school for the fall and gave me a moment to collect my thoughts, and in those thoughts was the idea of a magazine article. I volunteered to head up the project and no one else in NEQDC objected, which means one (or both) of two things:

1. They thought I could do a good job.

2. They didn't want to do it themselves.

So I was hired. I collected photos from everyone as we wanted to include at least one quilt from each of us to show how we all have very different styles, asked for some quotes about why we thought we worked well together and what worked for us at vending sites, wrote the copy and included photos, sent it out to NEQDC members for approval, rewrote where suggestions for improvement were made, sent it out for approval again, again rewrote where suggestions for improvement were made, sent it out with the declaration that I was not rewriting anything else because I had other things I wanted to do with my life than cater to these people (again, I am totally kidding and without their help this article would never have seen the light of day) and was granted the go-ahead from all to start sending it out to some magazines because by then they were afraid of me (yes, kidding again).

But who to send it to? As a group we had thrown around several names to start with, and The Quilter became our first victim for several reasons:

1. Most of us were familiar with it and liked it.

2. It had a good mix of patterns and quilter-interest articles.

3. I am FB friends with one of the associate editor, Natalie Rhinesmith. Had no clue if that would help us, or if it had a thing to do with anything, but the point is FB is a great networking tool. And Natalie is pretty funny.

Off it went to Natalie via yousendit.com, which I shamelessly plug here because it is awesome. Within hours Natalie responded that she had forwarded it to Laurette Koserowski, the editor, and I went on to do other things in my life after promising to the other NEQDC members I would let them know when I heard something, figuring it would be a year.

It was two weeks. We were told they loved it and wanted to put it in the Feb/March issue. From there it was just some copy proofing, contract signing, and joyous jumping from all of us. We were a little bummed when they had to put us off an issue due to space constraints, but no big deal and certainly not unusual in the industry.

Two weeks ago I received my advanced copy and could not even believe how gorgeous the real thing turned out. Even better than the proofs I had seen. I cannot say enough nice things about working with The Quilter - they were so professional, kept us apprised of every step and deadline and change made, and really just made the whole experience of having our first article published a really positive one.

So there's the backstory! We hope to see you at a show this spring or summer!

Page 82, baby

Memorize this cover. Not only is it lovely, but it's the one you want to buy just as soon as it hits stands (3/12/11 or so) to learn all about my designers cooperative - New England Quilt Designers Cooperative. Why do you want to learn about NEDQC? Why wouldn't you, really? We are six designers from New England who have banded together to vend at guild and regional quilt shows, like Maine Quilts and World Quilt Expo, sharing a booth, a business plan, and a lot of laughs along the way.

Just look for the article called "Strength in Numbers", written by yours truly. I promise I kept it very professional. It wasn't easy, but it was necessary. Enjoy!