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mber, 2002: These two photos were taken at the Cowboy Christmas in Fort Worth TX. Bill and I spent three days trying to sell my fabric patch purses--very unsuccessfully!
mber, 2002: These two photos were taken at the Cowboy Christmas in Fort Worth TX. Bill and I spent three days trying to sell my fabric patch purses--very unsuccessfully!We were supposed to have a booth that had a country Christmas feel to it but I certainly didn't have the money to create and build the normal display booth—and I didn't have the lead time. After much work and brainstorming, I finally came up with an idea... boxes... and more boxes... and still more boxes! I could buy cheap ones on clearance at the local box factory... they were light weight... they were collapsible so we could take them in a van. The picture in my mind of making them still makes me laugh! I took country Christmas fabric and put a fusible backing on it. My tried-and-true friend Pam came over and we spent hours ironing boxes! Some of them just have the sides covered with fabric. We also cut 
out some Christmas shapes and ironed those to other boxes... we stenciled... we painted. That must have looked pretty funny but the funniest was when Bill and I started assembling our "booth." No one could figure out what we were doing. We were sitting literally buried in the boxes we had put together (we put together almost 100 boxes) then we started arranging them. All the other booth owners decided we were selling pre-decorated boxes—we were laughing so hard we couldn't correct them. Finally we put out the purses. That show was a total flop--we only sold 3 purses—not enough to pay for food much less motel costs! But when we were packing up, we sold almost half the boxes to the other booth owners... and a few to show customers. We sold enough boxes to pay for the booth space.
out some Christmas shapes and ironed those to other boxes... we stenciled... we painted. That must have looked pretty funny but the funniest was when Bill and I started assembling our "booth." No one could figure out what we were doing. We were sitting literally buried in the boxes we had put together (we put together almost 100 boxes) then we started arranging them. All the other booth owners decided we were selling pre-decorated boxes—we were laughing so hard we couldn't correct them. Finally we put out the purses. That show was a total flop--we only sold 3 purses—not enough to pay for food much less motel costs! But when we were packing up, we sold almost half the boxes to the other booth owners... and a few to show customers. We sold enough boxes to pay for the booth space. 
January 2003: My sister Gale and I developed a line of strip-quilting templates for strip piecing Easy 2 C Templates; this was our debut showing of the line at the 2003 January Quilt show. All three quilts in the top photo use the Braid template. You can see the large hanging red, white & blue quilt "Colors & Textures of America." The two samples folded to the side are the same template, just different fabric placement... the blue & yellow is known as the Friendship Star; the multiple-color one is a Pinwheel Star. Gale still uses the Braid Template teaching at her local quilt shop (among other lessons)—she made the most beautiful Braid Quilt using golden yellow batiks. It was so beautiful in fact that some jerk stole the sample quilt! What a loss.
The second photo shows some of the block samples from the other square/half-square template sets. Many of these samples were made by Gale.
All said... I do better making than I do selling, or at least selling my own products!
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