How to Pack for a Trunk Show

I took on Cheryl Sleboda’s 31 day blogging challenge only to realize why I haven’t been blogging very often in the first place … I’m busy and tired by the time of day that I do have some time.  Oh well – it’s one of those times when I need my mom to tell me, “Suck it up.”  And because I hate to fail … I am sucking it up. I spent this afternoon preparing for a Trunk Show for the The Sewing Room/Material Girls Guild at Baraboo, WI in the Civic Center, Room 14 tomorrow, December 4th at 1pm.  It is $5 for nonmembers to attend. It normally takes me about three hours to get all prepared for these talks … but I took some steps before my last talk that made a HUGE difference in preparing.  It only took me about an hour and a half to have everything packed up and ready to go … and that’s with Pip’s ‘help’.  I’m going to share with you my tips on how to do this. 1.  Make a list of quilts you want to bring and the order you want to present them.  Now as I pull my quilts from the railing or the walls … I know exactly which ones to pull and which ones to leave.  So much less decision making.  This has also helped me wean down the number of quilts I bring into a cohesive presentation and leaving the opportunity for a guild to hire me again in the future to see the other quilts.  2.  Stack the quilts in the order you want to present them.  We have the list already made so this is easy.  3.  Pack the quilts in rolling suitcases.  I need three big ones to fit all my quilts.  It makes hauling the quilt so much easier! 4.  Pack the quilts in the backwards order you’ll presenting.  That means the first one you pull out of the suitcase will be the last one you show and so forth. 5.  Make sure you remember which suitcase to unpack first.  This suitcase will be the one that has the last quilt you’ll show on the very top.  In this case I need to unpack the patterned one, the purple one, the black one … which you probably don’t care about but now I can refer to this post as I unpack tomorrow. 6.  Take a picture of an adorable Pip ‘posing’ in front of your suitcases.  Seriously … she’s just too cute. It all boils down to one thing … taking the time to make a list of quilts was so worth it!  I have quite a few talks coming up in the next few months and now I feel like things will go much more smoothly getting ready for them.