Fibermania

Cwazy Dyeing Dames

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Again with the nostalgia... As I drove (or sat in traffic) for eight hours yesterday, memories surfaced of my days as a vendor with Laura Wasilowski. In the mid 90's we were traveling around the country selling our hand dyed fabric and threads and making a good living. We had so much more energy in those days.

One June we were going to be vending in Indianapolis at Quilt America and had planned to combine this with a quick trip to Columbus OH to sell at the QSDS mini-bazaar on a Wednesday night. But on Tuesday right before we left for Indy I got a call informing us that the mini-bazaar was switched to Tuesday night instead of Wednesday.

Uh oh. Could we do both now? This would mean getting to Indy, setting up our booth and then high tailing it to Columbus and setting up and selling the same day. I mean the same NIGHT.

We decided to give it a try.

It was a four hour drive to Indy in those days and the booth set up took about two hours. Then we scrambled back into the van and headed off too our next stop. Richmond IN. There we acquired a motel room and dropped off our luggage. Back into the van heading for Columbus. About 100+ miles.

We arrived and set up our sales table, complete with lighting, in the cafeteria of the symposium. It was as I recall, blasted hot as usual, not being the air conditioned venue that it is now.

Why would we bother with all this rushing since we were already selling for the week at Quilt America? Because the customers at QSDS are ARTISTS and really loved our fabrics and threads. They had put us on the map in previous years and we could not pass up the opportunity to sell to them again.

As we expected they were ready for us. It was a feeding frenzy. The sweat poured off of us as we made wild sales.

At the end of the hour (yes, it was that quick) we made over $5000!

And we still had fabric left in the booth at Indy.

Sticky and stinky, we got back in the car, returned to the Richmond motel and fell into bed.

The next morning we raced to Indy, checked into our hotel there and opened for business at Quilt America. Sales there were tepid. A different crowd for sure.

It takes a certain level of committment to pull off a day like that. Ah, the energy of youth.