~Among Brenda's Quilts~

Trendtext Quilting Convention Surrey BC 2008

While most of the West Coast Canadian Quilting world was recovering from their trip to Oregon in May, yours truly was recovering from that, and gall bladder surgery. But that didn't stop me from attending the Trendtex Quilting Convention in Surrey BC in June! Besides, now I could eat all the wonderful food that they had there.

I had a lot of fun, once again networking with people in the 'biz' and learning the ropes, one thread at a time. It's kind of unfortunate that Surrey was so cold and wet, weather-wise; but it kept people in the convention, and roughly half of the stores that showed up bought some of my designs. I got to speak with most of them, and collected a lot of business cards from people for my draw. I met with store owners from across the country.

Like most other designers, I had a couple of 'schoolhouse' talks, where store owners and employees could come in and listen to me speak about my patterns, and what makes mine different. I had a 15-minute talk that I called "Patterns Done Right" and perhaps 30 stores attended, half at one talk, half at the other.

Once again, its the people you meet that are most memorable - like Jean Boyd, of "Patterns by Jean Boyd" who had a booth of her creations nearby to mine. Jean has been designing and teaching quilting for over ten years, and she had a lot to teach me. In case you don't know, Jean has a lot of very interesting hanging quilts that incorporate photos and photo-transfers. Here's a link to her blog. Check it out, there are lots of links to her designs from this page!

Despite the rain and cold, we had a couple of hours of sunshine, and we walked to the nearby "Green Timbers Urban Forest." Thank goodness they had the foresight in 1930 to reforest this big chunk of land, and set it aside for everyone to enjoy.

It was literally a breath of fresh air to walk under the canopy of Douglas Fir and to listen to the birds in this fresh, green, mossy, ferny forest, smack in the middle of a sprawling metropolis. Let's hope that governments continue to honour the past commitment to keeping this forest growing!