Once you have created a couple or 10 quilts you might want to consider selling them. You can give them away to friends and family members and you can even sell them for FUN AND PROFIT. After all, you will need to recoup all that money and time you spent creating your fabulous creations and what better way than to sell a few. Of course, the more inventory you can create before you decide to sell the better. And the more the make the faster you will get at making them. There are various avenues for selling your quilts and Spring and Fall are probably the better times to try and sell them. You can pay the fees for a booth at a local quilting show or even pay the smaller fees at your local Flea and Farmers Market. But if you don’t want to schlep all your inventory to any of these places you can create a website.

If you go the traditional route you will have to pay for a domain, pay for website hosting fees and setup a shopping cart. And absolutely set up a PAYPAL account. PAYPAL is a secure credit card/electronic check processing website that keeps yours and your customers information safe and secure. Check out the GODADDY website for an inexpensive website solution that will give you complete control of how you website looks like, feels like and interacts. If you are not internet or web savvy then you can even try ETSY or another online service.
ETSY is another seller/buyer website that gives you leeway in your shop. They do charge $0.20 per item that you list and a small percentage of the amount you sell. They help you get the word out and offer videos and instructions on how to list, take pictures, involve your friends, even pay a small fee to have your items featured quickly. You have to renew your items every 4 months and pay the $0.20 per item fee again. The fees are due by the 15th of the following month. That gives you a little time to list your items and hopefully make a sale or two before they are due. Read through the help sections of any site or service you decide to use. So far we have been happy with all the services we are recommending.

They never seem to come often enough — weekends spent quilting with friends. A lot of projects were waiting to go along with me, but I mainly worked on just a couple. I never empty very many bobbins, but that’s not the point of the weekends. It’s the getting together, relaxing, and sharing that’s important (sharing food, advice, stories, and friendship).

I’ll show my projects next time. For now, here are the much more impressive projects shared by the other “retreaters.”

(1) Georgia has been working on her scrappy 12″ pineapple blocks and put them all together on Saturday. Pattern is from
Positively Pineapple. She will be adding a border.

(2) I think the spiderweb Q made by Becky is from a Fons and Porter pattern, but I didn’t find it in their “Best of Scrap Quilts,” as I thought I would. Triangles are 6″ tall.

(3) Following her pattern, Chris’s placement of the cut pieces made the yellow and purple appear to intertwine–with a pretty butterfly background. She trimmed the sides just after I shot this photo.
(4) Pat made the Blogger Girl quilt (from
Open Gate Quilts) using red and green fabrics with gold highlights. She worked hard on the sashing — the on-point squares are labor intensive, but they’re stunning when they’re added to the quilt to frame the blocks.
(5) Sue saw this quilt in someone’s Fons and Porter magazine, and we found
a download-able copy of the pattern online. It’s “Aunt Gracie’s Garden,” AKA “Emily’s Wedding Quilt.” Her background is Kona Snow, and we helped her cut an 8-1/2″ wide border from that. Flowers, leaves, and vines will be appliqued on the wide border
beforeit’s attached to the quilt. Four appliqued flowers will go on last, covering the mitered border seams.
NOTE: There are no curved seams here–only the
appearanceof some. Look carefully. It’s a combo of HST next to squares made with
Tri-Recs toolby EZ Quilting. Google “Tri-Recs” and you’ll find photos, tutorials, and ideas galore.
(6) We’ve been given all steps for our guild’s current mystery quilt. This is Kris’s version. Some gals used one fabric for the alternating snowball blocks; others used varied fabrics, as Kris did here.
(7) The biggest stash buster I’ve ever seen in person was this one that Georgia brought to show. She cut 30″ squares of fusible grid interfacing and ironed on 2″ squares. After folding on the lines and stitching 1/4″ seams, she ended up with
22-inch blocks (225 squares on each). The main body of the quilt is made from nine of those blocks plus three half-blocks.

Georgia added a 3″ black border, then a border of squares, four squares wide. My quick estimate is that there are more than 3000 2-inch squares in this quilt. I’m also estimating it’s around 84″ x 93″.
I have a lot of 2″ squares and some iron-on grid interfacing, so I could start one any time. I also have a daughter who enjoys the artistic arrangement of quilt blocks. I think she’ll enjoy arranging those squares for me–at least for a while. (I’ll take the help as long as I can get it.)
I hope you had a quilty weekend. Mine was filled with inspiration and relaxation.