Year end Summary

Doing a little database crunching, I came up with these numbers: this year I entered 20 shows and was accepted in 12. Some of these shows were invitational and did not involve jurying and some will not occur until next year. Of the acceptances, one is a solo show and several were in the category of 'what have I got to lose?' I paid $352 in entry fees and over $200 in shipping costs, which does not include the cost of the packing materials. One has to wonder if it's worth it.

Actually, I suppose that in the art world only $200 spent on shipping is pretty cheap. It's so easy to just roll the work up and put it in a long box and send it off. The long box is necessary if the hanging stick has to go with the quilt, but I don't like to fold my pieces, so I would use a long box no matter what. I buy them from Uline and I love looking through their catalog. It's like going to the office supply store.

I'm thinking about entering Visions but the entry fee is making me reluctant. If you're not a member of Quilt San Diego, you must join in order to enter. This makes the entry fee $70. And they keep the quilt for a year. Once it's sent for photography, they keep it, effectively preventing it from being shown anyplace else in the interim. The show isn't until November, 2008 and the photography is in March. The big selling point is that there is a full color catalog of the exhibition. I've never entered this one before so I'm hoping I don't have to go through the process of several rejections before an acceptance. Not implying that that's how they jury, just that I often get several rejections before getting into a show. Anyhow, I have until early January to decide.

I'm not ready for Christmas. I still need to ship some presents but I'm waiting on something to arrive. I still need to buy stuff, mail out Christmas cards, make cookies, and I'm sure there are other things I've forgotten. Guess I had better get going.

The Finishing Touch

This is a much better illustration of this edge finishing technique I'm working on. The first image is the quilt top quilted nearly up to the edge of the quilt; the batting and backing are still untrimmed.

The second picture shows the batting trimmed away just slightly smaller than the top (mostly) and the backing trimmed to 3/4" wider.

A 3/4" wide strip of Wonder Under is applied to the backside of the backing.

The paper is removed and the 3/4" strip is folded back and fused down.

This is the view from the front; the backing is turned back and fused so it isn't visible.

Another view of the top.

To secure that little bit of top along the edge, I quilted a continuation of the grid that was already there, taking the stitching off the edge which closes the gap between the top and the backing and hiding the batt.

This is what the back looks like. The finishing grid isn't as wide as the turned back edge, so every inch or so, I stitched a little further into the quilt to make sure that turned back edge doesn't come up. Click on the picture for a larger image.

We never made our planned to Chicago last weekend. The weather predictions of icy mix across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois just didn't sound like a situation in which we wanted to be driving. So it will have to be later. It's difficult to plan a trip at this time of year, what with the iffy weather and the holidays. We thought about flying out and renting a minivan to drive back even though that would be a lot more expensive. The only problem is that we would need the space in the back and so what would we do with the seats?

Now that it's the end of the year it's time for looking back over what I've accomplished in the past 12 months. I'll come up with numbers of shows entered, number of acceptances, and shows I've been in. I feel that this year I've sort of drifted along in the getting sales category. I haven't pursued much in the way of opportunities and the bottom line is reflecting that. I don't like to show a loss and can usually restrain my spending so that it doesn't overshoot my income but obviously I wasn't paying very close attention this year. Not too big of a loss, only a few hundred dollars. Next year I will do better.

Goals for 2007

Ha! If you thought I was going to present you with an itemized list of goals like Lisa's, think again. I am thoroughly impressed (and cowed) by what Lisa has planned for the coming year. But I have been thinking about it (yeah, working on the procrastination thing, too) and here is what I have so far:

1. More time in the studio doing art. Keep track of the time spent on art. But wait - does sewing on a sleeve count as art time? Or is that business time? I've made a chart with 4 divisions: art, surface design, business, and other. Surface design is really a subset of art, but I want to keep track of that also. Business includes maintaining my database of artwork and show listings, preparing entries, meetings (and travel time if it's any distance), show openings, photography of artwork, processing images, etc., etc. It's more difficult to break the art activities down: design and stitch. But wait, I often take photographs as inspiration and play around with them on the computer - where do I put that? So now I can get bogged down in trying to categorize the amount of time I spend on an activity. Maybe I will just aim for a total number of hours right now, keep track of what I'm doing, and in 3 months revisit this task. So okay - my goal is 30 hours per week.

2. Use a sketchbook. I have lots of sketchbooks, all with some of the pages used. But it's not something I keep at hand and jot in frequently. Needs to be a more concerted effort.

3. Exposure - seek out more mixed media shows; seek out public art and percent for art calls; seek out solo show opportunities. I have already sent out one application for a solo show and I subscribed to artdeadlines.com. Previously I was getting Art Calendar but I'm dropping that. I've also been building a collection of postcards of my work. Every time I finish a piece, I get 100 postcards from VistaPrint. Once you get something from them they start sending email offers for free stuff, in particular 100 postcards for free. It's not totally free because you have to pay for shipping and uploading the design, so it's actually about $10.

So for today, I'm going to spend quite a while ripping out quilting on my current piece that I don't like. I guess that goes into the art category, although it's more like un-arting. Then I also have an appointments for a haircut, a mammogram, a Dexa scan, and then I will go to the gym. That pretty much takes me to dinner time.

Seasonal note: today is the latest sunrise of the year, at least here in Baltimore. From now on the sunrises get earlier and the sunsets get later and the lengthening of the days will become noticeable. If you're wondering why the earliest sunset and the latest sunrise are not both on the winter solstice, read about the Analemma. I'm not going to explain it here.