Whirlwind!

This past week has been such a whirlwind!! Coming home from Nashville, I had only 2 days to regroup and then head over the mountain to Asheville to show my pieces at the Guild Fair of the Southern Highland Craft Fair. I've done the show for about 25 years. Can't believe it's been that long. The show is awesome. The quality of crafts is amazing! Sometimes it's hard to believe that they let me in! I like to play with colors. So my booth is full of color. The triangles are scraps that I sew on vests just for fun. They look really nice on people! The show was 4 days long. People are so interesting to watch. You get to meet the nicest folks from all over the place. I sold to people from as far as Delaware, Florida and othere times I"ve sold to people from California.

This time when we were setting up the Fire Marshal came by to say our curtains had to be fire retardant. Well, mine aren't. So I got away with using just a few of my panels to have a dressing booth. Guess I better do some research  on flame retardant fabric for the show in October. Guess what I"m going to do with the dozen or so panels that are about 2 x 6 feet long? I'm going to cut them up and weave them into placemats. They're a soft sand color.

The show was over Sunday afternoon and we got home late that night.

I came home with a couple of pieces that I had to alter. The top needed to be quite a bit narrower and the black and red vest needed to be shortened. I crochet alot on the edges of my pieces so removed that, cut where I needed to, serged the raw edges and re crocheted the edges. I have to pack them tonight yet to ship. They'll be happy that I'm getting them out this quickly. So, yesterday afternoon I was on a roll. I had finished what needed finishing and had time to sew a handbag that I'd started a few weeks earlier. The fabric is red, purple, yellow and blue. The picture is kind of fuzzy which is probably a good thing. I'd made the prototype for this in December for our challenge. That one went together nicely. This one didn't. First, I forgot to iron on interfacing. So figured I"d see how it did without that. Then, I had it about done and realized I couldn't turn it right side out. I had to take the whole thing apart and start again. Back on my roll, I sewed the base to the bottom. It's oval. I sewed it the wrong way, the lining too. So had to get the seam ripper out again and remove the oval. It wouldn't come easily since I"d double sewed it (of course), so cut it off and cut another oval for the base. This time it worked! I'm experimenting to see if I need to interface it or not. Interfacing it works nicely but if I don't have to do that, it would be good as well. This bag is mine. I wanted a summer color. The other one I did was browns.Today I've been packing. Weaving at the center was fun again. We had a new student! She's going to be good too!! I'm not sure why Tina hasn't posted yet. Maybe she will tomorrow. They decided it was ok for me to post a bit early. I"m supposed to post tomorrow. However, I have to leave very early in the morning to head to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan to see my Mom and sister. Since I"m not sure where I'll be spending the night tomorrow, it's better to blog tonight!

I'll be writing from up there the next few weeks. My car is packed with fabrics, batting, 2 sewing machines, rotary cutters, threads........you get the idea. Oh yeah, the inkle loom and a bunch of bits of carpet warp for more projects if I can get this one done! I'll be driving 2000  miles in about 3 days! I'm looking forward to the corn fields and my books on CD!

Carol