Sew What?

“Be Prepared” may be the Boy Scout motto, but exhibit managers would be smart to adopt it. For at the 2004 International Coatings Expo in Chicago, being prepared was the only thing that saved my ill-fitting fabric graphic panels — and my behind.

Shortly before the show began, my company measured and ordered graphics to fit our booth frame — a set of fabric panels with eight measuring 14 feet tall and another six measuring 8 feet tall. Since the booth used a rod-in-pocket attachment system meant to give the fabric a seamless look, the size of the graphics had to be spot on.

Our first chance to pair up the new graphics with their frames came during the first day of the two-day setup — a less-than-ideal scenario that struck fear into my heart, as I had a feeling something just wasn’t right with our measurements.

And wouldn’t you know it, as we started hanging the 14-foot panels, we found that our measurement had missed the mark — and I mean by a long shot. Our 14-foot fabric panels were 9 inches too long, which meant the panels pooled at the bottom of their frames like a pair of Shaquille O’Neal’s slacks on Danny DeVito. One glance at our baggy graphics, and I felt sick to my stomach, as this was exactly the kind of hiccup I’d been dreading.

Fortunately, like the Boy Scouts, I’d come prepared — opting to drive to Chicago from my home in Michigan with my sewing machine in tow, just in case our graphics needed some alterations. However, I still lacked a few supplies. So with the first day of setup ending soon and a hospitality event that would eat up most of my setup time on day two, I figured I only had roughly the next 12 hours to find some supplies and fix our graphics. So I high-tailed it to a local store, where I bought pins, a small ruler, and thread, and headed back to my hotel room to alter the panels.

Back in my tiny room, I quickly spread out the graphics. While we’d only tried the 14-foot graphics in their frames, I figured I had to remove 9 inches from the 8-foot panels as well. But to keep our images centered in the frame, I had to remove 4.5 inches on top and 4.5 inches from the bottom of each panel. That meant I had to measure, pin, cut, and sew both ends of the graphics for a total of 28 alterations.

But just as I was about to cut off one of those 4.5-inch sections, my gut instincts kicked in again. We had already made one measuring mistake, and I wasn’t about to make another one. So rather than cutting off the fabric, I sewed up each end so we could insert the rods, but I left the excess fabric attached just in case.

Not surprisingly, my sewing project took all night. After a few hours of sleep, I grabbed our graphics and headed back to the booth, where my staff and I started hanging the 14-foot panels. As each graphic panel was positioned snuggly into its frame, I breathed a sigh of relief. However, my relief soon gave way to exasperation when we hung the 8-foot panels, which turned out to be too short, as they’d apparently been measured properly in the first place. Thank goodness I hadn’t cut off what I thought was excess fabric!

So while I ran off to the hospitality event our company was hosting, my staff broke out some razor blades and undid my midnight handiwork on the 8-foot panels to return them to their original lengths.

Before long, the booth was ready — all thanks to my gut instincts and a little preparation. But as it turns out, a stitch in time doesn’t necessarily save nine, because while I looked like a genius for bringing my sewing machine to the show, I’m now my company’s go-to person for any and all alterations.

— Doreen K. Paquette, event and trade show specialist, Wacker Chemical Corp., Adrian, MI

Little Miss Fix It

No one confuses me for a burly handyman. I’m 5-foot 2-inches tall and petite, and about the only thing I fix around the house is my hair. But when I discovered that the keys to our booth’s storage room were missing — thereby giving anyone access to our valuable electronics — I had to muster up some do-it-yourself skills to put things under lock and key.

My last-minute snafu happened at EXHIBITOR2008 in Las Vegas. Up until late Sunday, the last day of setup, everything had gone marvelously. Our 10-by-20-foot booth was fully assembled, and our I&D folks had packed up and left for the night. Before I did the same, I went to check our electronics in the storage room — three Mac PowerBooks for presentations and a Wii system we planned to give away at the end of the show. That’s when I discovered that we’d somehow lost the keys to the storage room, which meant I could access the electronics, but so could every sticky-fingered thief.

On my own and with only two hours left of setup, I felt like a guard leaving Fort Knox’s front door open. After all, I wouldn’t leave a client’s valuables unsecured, so I certainly couldn’t leave my own company’s electronics unattended.

After a bit of brainstorming, I decided I could probably figure out how to replace the lock with a new one — complete with its own set of keys. But first I had to secure our valuables temporarily.

Luckily, I spied a ladder in our storage closet, which got me to thinking. Since we had a push-button lock, I could lock the door from the outside by simply pressing the button and shutting the door. When I returned later with a new lock, I’d simply need to climb over the walls of our ceiling-free storage space, and I’d be able to unlock the door from the inside. So I removed the ladder from storage, locked the door behind me, and hid the ladder in an inconspicuous spot in our booth.

Then I rushed to The Home Depot and headed toward the door-lock selection where I found a handle-and-lock combo just like the one on the door to our storage space. Along with the lock, I bought a selection of basic tools — a screwdriver, hammer, and the like.

When I arrived back at the exhibit hall, I set the ladder against the storage room, climbed over the wall, and unlocked the door from the inside. I pulled out the new lock’s instructions and performed them in reverse order to disassemble and remove the old lock. Then, following the instructions in the proper order, I installed the new lock, locked the storage room, and scurried out of the exhibit hall just as setup was ending.

Who knew? All I needed was a screwdriver, a lock, and a set of instructions to transform myself from a fix-it foul up to a handywoman extraordinaire.

— Kathryn Rue, account executive, Inter-Global Exhibitions Inc., Irvine, CA