Beautiful weekend at ARTEAST

Photo courtesy Kunido Robeen

Quite a few of the visitors to the Arteast event are artists themselves like my friend Kuniko Robeen who makes jewelry and mixed media work.

Photo by Valerie Goldston

Ginny French and her husband came 90 miles to visit!  I first met her several years ago at another Arteast venue but never kept in touch. Recently I discovered that the woman on India Flint's found, stitched, dyed facebook page that I'd been trading comments with for months was the same Ginny! She does nuno felting and now is experimenting with eco-dyeing. I'm still procrastinating on that front...having only done a handful of experiments. Ginny bought my only eco-dyed piece.

I have no illusions about selling my large work at a venue like this but I still like to showcase some of them. This venue had a wonderful old staircase that I took advantage of. Plowed Ground suspended in the stairwell is 120 inches long.  

A small selection of scarves here. The center one contains a print from an old sewing machine treadle. The one with the tag was printed with bed springs. The others are shibori rust.

One of my visitors was a past customer who bought a deep blue violet elderberry and rust scarf in 2010. I think this is the one. She assured me the color has not faded. I lost my elderberry crop to the drought this year. The berries I sought to save from birds had dried to a powder when I harvested. So no blue scarves for a while.  

This is my larger scarf rack. The venue was great--just enough room to fit everything in a nice display.

I even had a gorgeous red velvet sofa in the room where I could sit and rest. I brought yardage (on the sofa) and my dress form to display a blouse and shawl.

I brought a screen/scarf display where I put one of my quilts and found room to hang one of my very large pieces on a banner stand I had made a few years ago to display work where I could not mount on walls.

It's always a goal of mine to make sales at Arteast and this year went quite well for me. Thanks to all who came by to see my work and chat and a special thanks to all my customers. One of the first in the door was MJ Larson from Alton, IL who told me she'd found my blog some time ago and excitedly shared the news with a long time friend of hers who is also a fiber artist.  Turns out that the friend who lives in Texas now-Rosemary Malbin-is already a friend of mine on facebook!  The world is getting smaller.  It is nice to make these connections.