The Process of Making > amy a la mode

One Week ‘Til Quilt Market!

Posted by Amy on May 6th, 2011

Hello my friends!

Well, one week from today I’ll be headed off to Quilt Market. My goal was to have everything I needed to have done completed by today.

How’d I do?

I’ve been working on charm packs of my fabrics to give to interested fabric companies. I honestly have no idea how charm packs normally come packaged, but I didn’t want them to be all floppy, because they would end up mangled from being carried around all day. So, I made these little labels.

And then I attached them to 5-inch square pieces of white picture matting board that I cut with my trusty x-acto knife. I cut all the fabrics with my pinking shears (my rotary pinking blade is either dull — which it shouldn’t be — or just didn’t like this fabric). Then I stacked them all up as neatly as I could. And tied them up with little matching bows.

Of course, I ran out of ribbon before I finished. There are only 8 each of the boy version and the girl version, so 16 charm packs. It took a lot of fabric and way more time than I expected to make these!

As for my other preparations, I have been working on some new artwork, that, truth be told, I like much better than the two lines I had printed up at Spoonflower. Ah well. Unfortunately, this new stuff mostly didn’t make it into the digital portfolio I sent out, so there could be some folks who say they don’t want to talk with me, BUT if they only had seen the new artwork, they would be all over it! But there could still be a chance to talk to them at Market. You never know.

Nearly everything is ready for me to sit down with my repositionable double-sided scrapbooking tape and my portfolio and get everything fixed in. If I don’t do that over the weekend, it will be top of the list next week.

I now have two appointments with fabric companies, one Saturday at 10am and one Sunday at 10am.

I also have a friend who works with a well-known fabric designer, and my awesome friend mentioned to this designer that I was going to be at Quilt Market trying to sell designs, and this designer offered to introduce me to the folks at the fabric company she works for. So that’s awesome!

I also have another fabulous friend that is attending a party on Saturday evening hosted by yet another fabric company and she offered me one of her guest slots. Most excellent! Do I have great friends or what?

Less awesome: my first e-mail rejection letter today. Hey, I only need one company to like my work, right?

The biggest task I have left for next week — figure out what the heck I’m going to wear!! (Priorities, right?)

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

Fabric Has Arrived!

Posted by Amy on April 26th, 2011

I’m pretty excited about how it turned out. It’s not perfect, but I’m very happy with how it looks printed on the fabric!

I hope sepia tone and blurry photos aren’t too much of a tease, but since I’m going to be trying to sell this, I’m not sure if the companies who might be interested in buying it would want me to have posted detailed photos of all of it on the web. So, I’m afraid this is about all I’m going to show you of the actual fabric before Quilt Market!

Off to put together some digital files to e-mail to companies pre-Market!

Market Preparations Continue Apace!

Posted by Amy on April 21st, 2011

Fabric samples rush ordered from Sponflower (arriving Monday)? Check!
Frantic preparations of additional artwork in progress? Check!
Old (very old!) PC dusted off and brand new Electric Quilt 7 software installed for mocking up quilt with my fabric designs? Check!

Such a shame they don’t make EQ7 for Macs. I know it’s possible to get it loaded on a Mac, but I didn’t want to spend the money getting the additional software I would need + a copy of Windows. Besides, I refuse to load Windows on my Mac. It’s just wrong!!

FYI — I’m just playing around in the photo above, trying to learn how to use the software. Those aren’t my fabric samples.

Lizzy House Rocks PNCA

Posted by Amy on March 30th, 2011

As usual, Portland was fabulous! Okay, it was cold and wet. But you know what? It was so much fun to be in Portland that I barely even noticed.

Once again, PNCA hosted a fabulous event. And once again, it was an inspirational and educational weekend. My classmates were inspiring, encouraging, and fun folks, and Lizzy House is a little dynamo.

We spent the first day in a classroom doing a lot of sketching and learning how to do repeats on paper. This was an entirely computer-free class, which is definitely a switch for me. A good one, I think, to get me out of my comfort zone, if you will.

Here’s Lizzy showing us some new top secret stuff she is working on!

Day two we did block printing. Here’s Lizzy demonstrating how to do the printing.

And here are a couple of shots of me (courtesy of my friend Sarah Moon, who was writing an article on the class).

And here is my block-printed fabric. Pretty cool, huh?

On the third day, we moved on to screen printing. I had done some simple block printing before in one of my design classes, but I had never done screen printing. There’s a lot of waiting involved in screen printing. And a lot of just cool equipment and general messiness. Here’s Lizzy demonstrating on her screen print.

And here’s me with mine (again, courtesy of Sarah Moon).

And this is my final screen print!

You can see it a little better up close. It’s the Thien Mu Pagoda from Hue, Vietnam, with a palm tree and a little person in a conical hat.

While learning how to do the repeats and the printmaking were all a lot of fun, the best parts of going to Portland to take this class were spending the weekend with my creative and inspiring classmates and meeting Lizzy. She’s a fabulous. l mean, really fabulous. After talking to her over the weekend I am energized and revitalized regarding the projects I was working on, and all hyped up to work on some new projects as well! She even gave me some great feedback on my Project Selvage entry, which I really appreciated!

I can’t tell you how much I would love to have a mini Lizzy House looking over my shoulder all the time giving me the kind of encouragement she gave us all over the weekend. I have a tendency to get bogged down in things and think that something isn’t going to be doable. But Lizzy has a very can-do kind of attitude that is the kick in the pants (to borrow her phrase) that I could really use on a regular basis!

One last photo of Lizzy and me. To see more fun photos from the class — with more of my classmates and all the messy steps and cool equipment — check out my Flickr set. PNCA also has photos on Flickr here, and one of my classmates has a set here as well. Enjoy!

Gingher Snips Love

Posted by Amy on March 11th, 2011

I have a lot of equipment that makes my quilting/sewing life easier — a great machine, my SewEzi table, my design wall. But also at the top of that list are my 4″ Gingher snips.

They show up every now and again on this blog. Like here and here and here.

They are super sharp and come to a super fine point, making it a snap (or a snip?) to get into those tight little places to clip threads or fabric. I always use these to clip seams around curves as well. They work SO much better than my big dressmaker shears.

Look at that sleek shiny beauty.

Best part is that my husband was with me in a quilt shop one day and I pointed at these little lovelies and said, “It would be nice to have a pair of those some day.” And just like that, he bought them for me. He’s a keeper!