Renegade Chicago Recap

As I mentioned a couple times before, Mara let me help out with the Maramiki booth for Renegade Chicago a couple weekends ago.

We had fun planning out how we would display her items beforehand (though it would have been hard to make her things look bad!), taking over her living room with our mock-up displays and ensuring that her family thought that we are at least a tiny bit nutty. We were really excited by how the display turned out - lots of her printed fabric accented by repurposed wooden items, home-grown wheatgrass, plus handwritten labels. One of my favorite items was the 'swatch banner' she sewed with printed fabric scraps that we hung along the back wall of the tent- such a great way to display different colors & images since she does so many custom items.

You can see our pictures from the weekend below:

The weekend of the fair was SO. WET. It was insane- you know how normally, when it rains very hard, that just means that the storm will be over quickly? Not this time - we ended up with almost 7 inches of rain over the day on Saturday! We found out later that the day had broken the 20-year record for the most rain in Chicago on that date! And we were sitting outside in a tent. Makes sense.

We both felt like swamp people by the end of the day Saturday (my feet looked like I had taken a 12-hour bath!), but it was fun to be able to show off her items in person. We were pleasantly suprised by the number of people braving the weather to see the fair, and everyone was commenting on how gorgeous her items were. I had really wanted to wander the fair & spend some money, but just couldn't get motivated to walk around in the rain.

All-in-all, was a neat thing to be a part of, but I was disappointed for Mara that the weather was so stinky... but when chatting she has lots of great ideas for Maramiki, so excited to see what is next from her now that she doesn't have to spend time prepping for the Fair anymore!