Last Market Post & Feathered Star

I almost forgot to write this post! How possibly could I? This is the last post I will write about Spring Market and then I will move on. I think. No guarantees at this point. I think I need more coffee.

Oh, and I almost forgot - there's still time to enter in my latest giveaway. Remember you can enter up to once a day, it's really simple - just click here to head on over and enter to win!

Anywho, my Mom made this quilt to hang in the Timeless Treasures booth and I had the pleasure of quilting it:

 This is the Feathered Star pattern by Judy Niemeyer (Quiltworx). This is the smaller size, but there is a version in a queen size. I also quilted a queen size version not too long ago and you can see it here.

 This quilt features the new Tonga Punch line of fabrics that should be coming out in stores later this year.

 I loved seeing how the lighting in their booth showed off the quilting details.

 And here's some pictures I took when I finished quilting it. This quilt had tons of texture.

 I find that quilts of ours that are going to travel around a bunch, and possibly will live folded up in boxes or suitcases hang much better if they are densely quilted. I think I went a little overboard with this quilt...

 Maybe not, I tried to keep the range of motifs simple and tried to tie in all of the quilt elements together.

I really like how this center turned out. I tried to combine the straight lines and swirls to fill the space and mirror the other spaces in the quilt.

I've been quilting up a storm and I will try to share more of those pictures with you all. Until then, gotta get back to the machine!

My booth at Market...

I know Market was awhile ago and I've gotten behind again on my blog. Sorry about that. When Market time rolls around you truly forget how much is involved and I've been working diligently on my new manuscript as well as a whole slew of other things and before you know it, I pass out on the couch and no blogging... Not cool!

So, I know it's a tad late, but I wanted to share pictures from my home away from home for a few days during Market.

 Here it is! My little piece of the Market puzzle. And puzzle it was! I along with a bunch of other Martingale Authors participated in the Author Hop. It's pretty neat, you get a passport and go around to all of the booths listed, collect a stamp and get entered into a drawing for books and other prizes. People kept getting lost finding me but the crazy thing was I WAS RIGHT ACROSS THE AISLE from Martingale. I could see the basket the Grand Prize Winner would get... Oh well.

 I brought out many of the quilts from Seamingly Scrappy to show off and they got a ton of love during Market.

 I also got a preview of a fun new book I'm in coming out next month... More on that later though... :)

 My little table was so full of stuff! Most importantly was the Jolly Ranchers and chocolates which sadly were breakfast and lunch most days. Not joking... We were slap happy by the end of the day on Sunday, probably due to the mass amounts of candy in our systems!

 I absolutely LOVE the Pittsburgh Convention Center due to this natural light that streams in all day long. This was my view from my booth and it was so nice to see clouds and sun and something outside while we were inside. Many convention centers are drab and dark and no windows... How boring!

 We also were showing the new Heritage BOM that will be released shortly. I'll do a whole post later to show off this gem!

And because I could... Talk about sunlight!!! How many places can you say this was your booth inside? I snapped a picture or two.

But that was it, we did it, we ended up carrying everything out to the car afterwards (not fun, you can read why here) and aside from the one wrong turn out of the city, we made it home and still do not have a new coffee table yet. I may just keep this broken one forever until it meets it's match. Or I find a replacement. I'm not searching too hard right now, I have other fish to fry. Speaking of which, gotta go quilt!

PreQuilt Market Recap

So this time around to market, my Hubby was with me for the first time to set up the booth. We had a plan. It was going to be great. 

I live so close to Pittsburgh we drove and he did great through the wind and rain driving a much larger vehicle than we are used to (I would have been white-knuckling it the whole way) and all was good. We got there in good time, we found where we were supposed to be quite easily and we started unloading. 

This is where it started going south. Someone told me about this great idea to put casters under the table you plan to use in your booth, load everything on top of it, roll it in and set up. Sounded great. We made to just the other side of the booth next to us when I heard it - CRACK!!!!!

Now mind you this is my coffee table from home... Ooooppppssss. The leg had barely any support and we didn't know it until it broke off. So like any prepared woman, I brought duct tape :)

It held it on just enough to keep the table functional and useful throughout the show and you could barely see it. See:

You can just barely see the tape under the left leg. No biggie. It's actually back home still taped up until we can find a replacement. We didn't know the mainframe of the sides were constructed of MDF with veneer until it broke so there's basically nothing left to connect it back to. Oh well. 

Luckily we made it almost to the booth and that was the big hurdle during set up. It made tearing down more adventurous because we has to carry everything out and we were both sweaty beasts in no time. The loading dock was on the opposite wall from where my booth was and it was an adventure. But we survived. 

The only other pitfall we encountered was right before leaving for the first day of market, I was all ready to go. Hair and make up done, I just had to put on my dress and shoes and we were out the door. I went to go zip up my dress and the zipper broke. Quickly I changed into plan B and buzzed over to market and had some chocolate. It only seemed appropriate. 

I'll post actual good camera photos of the booth soon bathed in the natural sunlight we are lucky to get at Pittsburgh. Until then, gotta go sew!

Instagram Me

I did it. I gave in to the forces of peer pressure :) Not that it was that hard, but now you can find me over on Instagram! You can find me at rubybluequilts and I will be posting all sorts of random stuff over there too.

I found myself surrounded by really awesome people at one point in my booth and everyone was chatting about Instagram and they convinced me to give it a try. So far so good and I think it will be fun. So stop on by later on.

Also, I will be doing an after market post shortly, but I'm still trying to get back in the groove and settled in and trying to find a new coffee table :/ Oh, I guess I forgot to tell you about that. If you saw it on Facebook, you know what happened, otherwise I'll tell you about it here soon.

In the meantime however, if you haven't entered, you still have time - the talented and awesome Amy Ellis is hosting the Blogger's Quilt Festival! You can enter up to two finished quilts per person and enter into several categories for your chance to win a ton of prizes. If you don't have a quilt or two to enter, stay tuned for the voting to open up and you can help to choose the winners! It's really fun to see what everyone has been creating lately.

So to recap, Instagram me, hop over to Amy's blog, and stay tuned for market stuff! Sound good?

It's Market Time!!!

We made it. The booth is set up. I've just had a cup of coffee and we are getting ready to head over to the show. 

This was how we left the booth last night, the aisle carpet wasn't down yet. But anywho, come visit our booth #614! We can chat about my new BOM pattern (hanging to the right) that will be released next month, you can gain some energy from the candy buffet on my table (which I'll have to tell you about later), AND best of all, you can come meet Mr. Ruby Blue! My Hubby, Ben, is with me and it's gonna be a fun weekend. Hope to see you soon!