The Wrap Up Report

Maybe you have been wondering how my "something bold" experience from the weekend of October 19/20 went. I have been somewhat delayed in posting this report because of a sad family event that needed my presence in New Zealand.

 Here is my space on Sunday morning. That's my lovely artist friend Linda Jones who had invited me to join her and set up a "pop up" studio in her living room for the tour. Linda has hosted visitors to her studio for this annual event since the very first one ten years ago. By her estimation (based on a somewhat unscientific tally of who signed the visitor book) we had 140 visitors at our location.

Above is the view visitors had as they entered the home and walked down the short flight of stairs into the living room. I had some smaller pieces on the display rack on the right with various round robin quilts in the center and left. In a daring move (given the weather forecast) I also had a couple of quilts draped outside on the deck; Linda's back yard has a stunning wooded aspect and with the leaves starting to turn it provided a wonderful view so my motive in placing quilts out there was to draw visitors out to enjoy the view.

 As you can see I did set up my sewing machine.  The theory was that I was going to be showing how I create my quilts but the reality was when there were visitors in the room I was talking up a storm. Over the course of two days I maybe sat at the sewing machine for an hour total. But I was quite content with that. I did have to suck on quite a few cough drops to soothe my throat from so much talking! On the round table in front of the sewing table I had a binder which had full page size photos of quilts I have made that were not on display.

As a visitor turned to go down the stairs to Linda's studio area this was the view they saw. I apologize to my friend who was helping out as a greeter - this photo catches her in an awkward pose! My biggest quilts were draped over the upstairs railing. Although only one was seen in it's entirety this was a good place for them. You might notice that second from the right is my most recent project, the Grandmothers Choice quilt top (you can see a quarter of it).

In a basket that I placed centrally I had "party favors" containing three pieces of candy wrapped in a twist of lime green tulle tied with ribbon and a label giving my email and this blog address intended as a way that visitors could carry home a record of how to contact me.

On the days I also passed out flyers with details of  the larger local quilt group that I belong to along with advice on where I buy my fabrics, where to go locally if you have a quilt needing repair and verbal information about the quilt show I am curating at ArtSpace  Herndon in January-February 2014.

At my suggestion we decided to ask visitors as they arrived to look at all the works on display and then, as they left,  to please vote for what was their favorite painting and their favorite quilt. This had an unspoken message of suggesting that a visitor look carefully at all our work on display. Of course not everyone did this but it was a great ice breaker.

There was no clear winner among my quilts. 31 visitors cast their vote; the leading quilt was Savannah Snapshot with a total of 6 votes closely followed by I'm from the South with a total of 4 votes. Of note about these two quilts is that both of them are the product of my Remarkable Round Robin group.

Overall I was very content with this, my first testing of the waters, participation in the Great Falls Studio Tour. The experience of talking with a variety of visitors - some came specifically to meet the quilter, some were just enjoying the entire event and some were regular visitors to Linda's art studio - was very positive. It would be wonderful if I had some feedback here from visitors or perhaps some who wished they might have been able to join the tour.