After the Quilt Show

We had a fun time at our first show of the year yesterday.  It was another successful quilt show put on by Heather's Fabric Shelf and there were lots and lots of fabulous, beautiful quilts to see.

This quilt, titled "Gone with the Flow" was created by Sheila Crowe, and was our absolute favorite.   It was in direct view of where we were located so had a chance to admire it all day.  It is a hand quilted piece from a postcard design.  You can see the postcard picture above to compare how similar it looks but when you get up close it has so many more features which makes it so unique.  It is more of a multi-media quilt as it has other textures added such as real feathers used for the hair.

This is the main part of our display.  It was our first showing of our new interchangeable jewelry and we are still working out the best way to show it off and were interested to see how it was going to be received.  The response from our customers was very good and we received a lot of positive feedback.

Dave taking a moment out during set-up.

Donna and her mom Elsie of Donna's Yarn & Craft were also there and set up right next to us.  They had lots of knitting and crochet type samples there to provide plenty of inspiration for some fun projects.

The photo below is one idea that Donna has been working on together with Mary Anne, who is  another local polymer artist.  Mary Anne hand sculpts all these adorable little kids buttons.  She is a a retired veterinarian so you can see why she does the animals so well.  These are decorations combining crochet or knit flowers and using Mary Anne's buttons for the centres.  I forget what they all represent but perhaps you can figure out some of them -- There is a Black-eyed Susan, a Ger"bear"a Daisy, Dogwood, and I think those little babies are cabbage patch kids.  These are a fun idea to add to a child's sweater or add to their slippers.

Polymer buttons created by Mary Anne, Kamloops, BC

The spring season was off to a good start for us and we have several more shows coming up over the next few weeks so will keep us busy for a while.

2 Good "Soul" Mates and More Buttons

I haven't blogged in a few days as we have been too busy with things to stop and write about it.  By the end of this blog post I think you will know why.  We have had a lot of exciting things happen lately and something even more exciting starting tomorrow so stay tuned for our next post.  For a hint you can check out this blog post by Knot-sew-cute.

We have been working on some new button styles and sometimes a new idea or inspiration can come from the most unlikely places.  Dave was shopping around for a new car and found this Kia Soul that is just right for our lifestyle.  It is not only fun to drive but also works well for the gear that we are always hauling around.  They first showed us a grey one and of course our last car was grey and so I had to ask if they had anything in a fun color.  They happened to have this bright red one which we both really love.  So now we can say we are also "2 Good Soul Mates" -- lol.

So what does this have to do with making buttons?  Well the Kia Dealer in Kamloops happens to be only one block from Donna's Yarn & Craft.  We happened to mention to several guys at the dealership about the buttons we make that Donna sells and they were very interested.  We showed them some samples and that led to an idea.  They explained to us how they wear these really nice dress shirts but they all have these boring and usually white buttons on them.  Since they do not wear ties anymore, it would be really cool if we could come up with some really funky buttons for their shirts in colors to coordinate.  We thought it was a neat idea as well so as soon as possible we started experimenting.

We decided to use some of Dave's shirts to start as we needed to make them in the right size.  We discovered that making this type of button is a little more challenging since they are so small.  When creating a cane and reducing it down to only 12mm, the pattern becomes very small and difficult to see.

This is the first set we did for a light blue shirt that Dave had.

We then decided to make some in silver and black shown here:  The little solid black buttons are for the collar tips and sleeve plackets to replace those extra tiny ones.  We made these in a solid color and with a shank to add a little contrast and style.

And these are a few more button style samples we have been experimenting with in brighter colors:

So soon we should be turning some men's shirts from blah to bazinga!