I think this may be one of the slightly emotional, vomit of words blog posts. You have been warned.
I worked my first booth on Saturday. I spent so much time getting everything together. It looked perfect. Exactly the atmosphere I was going for.
I was nervous, anxious, excited.
I went, I saw...
I did not conquer.
If the rate of success was solely measured from a monetary stand point, I failed. Miserably. I sold nothing. I could go through a list of excuses as to why. The economy, the audience was definitely NOT my target, and on and on and on. At the end of the day, none of them make me feel better. You question if you just suck and don't know it. What if people are just being nice and everything you make really just looks like crap? In fact, at one point in my dramatic, adult size tantrum, I decided that I was going to sell all of my fabrics and machine and call it a day.
Then I had a drink, lots of chocolate and wonderful people around me who helped to set my head straight. No one hits a home run, their first time up to bat. In fact, many people strike out their first time.
I definitely did.
I'm going to suck it up and do the next show in May. There is a Saturday market in Montgomery that I've been told is more my target. I'm also going to focus on the good things that came from yesterday. The cards I handed out, the contacts I made, the compliments on how beautiful my work is, the custom orders I received, the email addresses I got, the couple of repair requests, and the two ladies who asked me for lessons.
My only goal for Saturday was just to show up. I did that. Anything beyond that was just the icing on the badly needed chocolate cake.
Just keep swimming, I think can, I think can and all that jazz.
Thank you for letting me spill that into the Internet. I never realized how truly personal making quilts is for me, until yesterday. It really is important that this somehow manifests itself it a bigger part of my life.
I'm just not ready to admit defeat.
~SLBY
3 comments:
I'm sorry that your first time was not as well as you had hoped it would be. That is wonderful that you were able to get a few custom orders, though! Keep up all the hard work! It will pay off ♥
Thank you! :)
Your stuff is beautiful! Don't ever doubt it! I would buy it all if I had the money. And if you ever make that "Hell" quilt, I may have to rob a bank to afford it. (And custom orders count as a sale in my book.)
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