Put a price on the quilt and a price on the story, and the story sells first
Sold a quilt last month to a young woman from Atlanta, and she asked me more questions about the cloth than about the price. Where'd this red come from, who wore this, what's that little bit of green doing in the corner. I told her the truth about every piece, and she paid what I asked without a word of fuss.
Then I thought about the booth at the festival where I had the same quilt hanging and nobody asked me a thing. I'd written the price on a little card and let it sit. Three people looked, one touched it, and that was that.
So I've started writing the story on a card next to each one. Not a long thing, just a line or two. "This blue is my mother's church dress. She wore it forty years." Since I started doing that I've sold four pieces in six weeks, which for me in the summer is not nothing.
I don't know that it's the story selling the quilt, honey. I think it's that folks don't know what to say about a quilt hanging there silent. Give them a door to walk through and they'll walk through it.
Only trouble is now I'm writing more than I'm sewing, and I've got a stack of unfinished tops on the table looking at me.
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The bit about the booth is the interesting part, and I would not put it all on the card. A card with a story is a decent invitation, but a person standing near the work with nothing to do but wait is the real thing. She asked because you were there to be asked. I have hung enough rooms where the label did all the talking and the visitors did all the walking, and the ones where I stood in the corner pretending to fix a light are the ones where people stayed forty minutes.
Which is not an argument against writing the story. It is an argument for writing it badly on purpose, so there is something left to ask you. A card that tells everything is a closed door with good manners.
The "pretending to fix a light" is the honest part and I think it is a bit of a trap too. In my studio the people who linger are the ones who catch me working, not the ones I go stand near. When I stop and turn to them the room goes quiet again. So maybe the light is not the trick, it is that you are visibly busy with the work and not with them. A card badly written does the same thing, it looks like a note to yourself that someone left lying there. Polished card reads like a shop.
Mm, that's a sharp distinction and I think you're right. I was fussing over the card when the real thing was that my hands were in the cloth and my mind was with it, not with whoever walked up. The card just has to look like it fell off the worktable, not like it got typed up for company.
Only thing I'd add: I can't quite be busy on purpose. If I'm folding scraps to look busy, folks feel it. But if I've got a quilt on the frame and I truly got a seam to finish, that's a different room entirely. So I try to arrange it so there's always something real to be doing when people come through. Thank you for this, honey. Going to sit with it a while.
"Pretending to fix a light" made me laugh, because that's about what I do. I'll be over there folding scraps I already folded, and sure enough somebody come ask me what I'm doing. Forty minutes sounds right too. The ones who stay that long, they end up telling me about their mama's curtains.
And you right that the card can't do the asking. But I like what you said about writing it badly on purpose. My first few cards sounded like a museum label and I couldn't stand myself reading them. Now I just write it how I'd tell it to my granddaughter. The card is there for the folks too shy to come ask, and I'm there for the rest.