Earlier this year, I was considering attending my first Quilt Market. 2016 has been a “start-up” year for Whole Circle Studio. I had the credentials to attend Market as an attendee and thought it would be helpful to check it out. If you told me at the beginning of the year that I/Whole Circle Studio would be exhibiting, I never would have believed you. And then I received this email…
{{{Side note: Check out the time on that email. For whatever reason that night I woke up at around 2am and couldn’t fall back asleep. I don’t know why, but I checked my email. Yup… I got this news at 2am. Needless to say, I never fell back asleep. It took everything in me not to wake Jason, my husband, to tell him the news.}}}
Some background to this email:
I found out about the Craftsy Quilt Designer Fellowship in a Craft Alliance Industry weekly newsletter to members. I had about a month to pull together my application. It was tough. Writing doesn’t come naturally to me and I procrastinated. I hemmed and hawed over which of my quilts to feature (and in the end, I showed some that were works in progress). I questioned whether I’d even be ready to have a booth at Quilt Market—at the time, I only had 3 published patterns, with others in progress. {By the end of October, in time for Market, I had 6 in total. There’s nothing like a deadline to make you kick it into high gear.)
I really wanted this Fellowship, but also knew that others wanted it as much as I did and there are a lot of talented designers that would be applying. In the end, I dedicated the time to write and produce the application, proofed it (and had others close to me read it through multiple times) and submitted it.
In the month of waiting I was hopeful, but not expecting, to be selected. I think maybe 3 people (the 3 that helped me proof my essay) knew I applied. That’s the great thing about putting yourself out there for things like this, or juried quilt shows. No one knows what you go for unless you tell them.
I am incredibly grateful to Craftsy and the judges who selected me. They had a tremendous amount of trust and confidence that I could pull this off. In the weeks to come, I’ll be posting about how I got from the email above to the photo below.
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