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It was pretty scary for Melissa Sobotka when her award-winning quilt, Silk Road Sampler, didn't return home from Houston as planned. After many anxious hours, it was finally discovered in Michigan.
Star Members will be able to watch Melissa when she comes to TQS in April, 2017.
We just got some great information from Nancy Prince (another Houston Best of Show Winner) on a better option for tracking your quilts. Here's what she has to say:
(NOTE: We are going to keep looking into the problem and will update if new solutions are found.)
The Tile Mate works on Blue tooth technology and the app on the quilt owner’s cell phone has to be within 30 feet of the Tile Mate device for it to work. Basically the device emits a sound once the cell phone is within 30 feet. So if the quilt is on a FedEx truck or at a distribution center, the Tile Mate cannot notify the owner of its location. There is always that outside chance if the quilt is in a distribution enter or on a truck that someone could walk buy that has the app and possibly notify the owner, but this is a long shot at best. I am always on the lookout for a smaller device to track my quilt so I forwarded the Quilt Show link to my husband, Techie Tom, and he gave me the above information.
For my quilt "On This Winter Day" I do have a tracker in it. My quilt is rolled on a 4” PVC” tube and my husband bought me a product called Spot Trace. The device is secured inside the PVC tube. Spot Trace is a bit pricey - $100 but you can get them on sale for $50 – but effective. Now the device is too large to sew into the quilt so I can only track the quilt when it is in route. But I figured that the biggest chance for the quilt to get lost is on the road and not at the venue where it will be hanging. Does it protect the quilt 100%? No, but enough for me so I know where it is all the times on the road. The device can be set to alert me (you can determine the time between alerts) on a regular basis so I know where it is. I can even see the FedEx truck on the road – bit spooky but at least I know where it is. The device does run on batteries so I always make sure that it starts out on a trip with new ones. The more alerts you have the faster the battery will run out. So we have set the alerts so that the batteries in the device will last about a month. There is a yearly subscription fee but I feel the cost of that and the device are well worth the price to protect my quilts while they are on the road. Obviously if the quilt is not on a PVC or cardboard roll, the device cannot be used.
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