Happy 1st day of summer!

To Celebrate we are having a
Summer SALE.

All remaining Bohemian Rhapsody Fabrics $7.95/ yd

Rumba kits 50% off (2-ocean 1 - tabacco only)
Calypso kits 50% off (3 only)

Fat quarter bundle 30% off ; ocean palette and tabocco palette
(6 FQ bundle) black & whites

There is limited quantity available and prices are in Canadian funds. Shipping charges will apply.
Please email info@bluemeadowdesigns.com or CALL 204-362-1984 to place your order.
Visa & Master Card accepted.

p.s you will note that our patterns are now $7.99 in the shop. You can view the products and regualar prices on http://www.bluemeadowdesigns.com/. DO NOT USE pay pal, the sale prices are on email or phone call orders ONLY.

Happy summer shopping!!

Here are some places you may want to visit.

www.violetpatch.com
www.makeitu.com
www.thimbleberries.com

enjoy your trip to these great places!

Something Special

We have worked for RJR for a few years now, but rarely get the opportunity to meet the other designers. We did have the privilege to meet Debbie Beavis at our very first quilt market, but had not seen her since! What a sweet lady, treated us like one of the gang, great advise and made a special effort to help us with our power point! Loved the talks about the quilting industry.

This trip was especially special because we finally had the opportunity to meet one of the largest fabric & pattern designers in the whole quilting world...Lynette Jensen!! She was gracious and interested in what we were doing. She was so approachable and fun too! We had a great supper with these ladies and the rest of the RJR staff; Demetria, Mario, Rick & John.

Then there was this young lady...Shannon Mullen. She is the force behind the Make it You campaign. Young full of life and great fun. We had many conversations about how to get younger women into this great quilting industry. It was so fun just getting to know her on a personal level. We connected so well that we are going to be collaborating with her on her next book! So excited about this.

As you can see our time in Vancouver was so much more than just a trade show. We made great connections and had a ton of fun with this great group of quilters! In a future post I will get links to these ladies websites.

Home from Vancouver

I had never been to British Columbia before and this is all I saw of the senery! Myra and I were in Surrey BC at the Trend Tex Quilt conference this past weekend. We were there as a part of the RJR gang. It was a quick trip but a great one! We did two school house classes, were we talked about our upcoming fabric collection Cape Cod. We met great Canadian quilt shops!

We were also at the RJR booth to promote our new kids patterns, featuring the RJR hanspray fabrics. We started working with the handspray collection when we designed the Daisy baby pattern. We have added four more patterns to our collection, Little Lady and out of the blue.

Our inspiration

Our kids have always been apart of our business. When we were writing our first book for Martingale, my daughter Kierra was only 3 months old, she's turning 8 this month!! And now we have a combined total of four kids. Our kids have been at our feet ever since! There was this one time, Myra was at the grocery store news stand and there happen to be a magazine that we had a quilt in. She showed her son. Our kids are often unimpressed by what we do, the travel the magazines...so Myra tried to explain to her son that this was a kind of special. So she asked if he knew of any other mom's who did this. Well of course he did..."Kierra's mom"!! Okay so he was right but that wasn't what Myra was going for. Kierra has come around and she is interested in "designing" her own quilts, she wants to learn more. We hope someday that they will appreciate the collection of quilts they will inherit!! We took this picuture at my house the other day and just thought we would share.

and the Winner is...

Cheryl! Thanks ladies for making a comment, it was a lot of fun checking up on the blog and reading what you all wrote. Cheryl, I hope you are checking to see if you won because I need you to email me, cori@bluemeadowdesigns.com and we can talk about the journal and getting it to you. So excited. My daughter drew the name and she was so happy to be involved too. And as for the other seven of you who did not win. I won't leave you emty handed....If you you email me your mailing address I will drop a surprise in the mail for you too!!!! I love this, giving stuff away. Makes me happy! Thanks ladies and keep in touch. Thanks for participating. AS for the rest of you who are reading our blog and did NOT participate in this draw, I am sure we will have another one. Keep your eyes open.

Cori

It's the journey, not the destination

It’s true. As you get older, every cliché that you have ever heard turns out to be true. A picture really is” worth 1000 words”, “Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder”, and be careful to not “throw out the baby with the bathwater.” But there is one cliché that finally sunk into me this week. “It’s the journey, not the destination.” It’s words that I have heard a thousand times, but some of us are slow at grasping the full meaning. I have always headed for a destination….that’s just the way I am. I am driven by design. Since I was small, no matter where my family traveled, I always was drawing, and re-drawing what I saw. I have finally learnt that this just has to come out of me, and I can’t be settled until I have explored all of the options of a design. Now, in my later years, I have always loved the destinations that I was heading too. These destinations are often writing deadlines, art deadlines, and paperwork deadlines. And Cori can CLEARLY tell you that I need these deadlines, or I would continue to re-write, re-draw, and re-design everything that I have just finished. Cori will make sure that I finish a drawing, and move on. I sometimes think that is why God put her in my life.

But this week I have learnt to breathe, and really enjoy the journey. I know my deadlines are there, and once I reach them, there will be more deadlines, and that’s OK, because I am secure in knowing that I am headed in a direction, and not just adrift. I can look around my studio, and see all of my past journey’s. And do you know what? They were really great. While keeping up on our inventory list, I realized that Cori and I have created 99 original quilts that are now in our collection. Some of them are stunning, some of them are logical, some of them are practical, but all of them are a physical piece of the journey that we have taken as friends. And even the ones’ that make us roll our eyes and say ‘What were we thinking?’ have been apart of our trip.

And the best part of this trip? It really has been “the friends that we have meet along the way.” Isn’t that another cliché? But once again it is true. We think of you guys often. I proudly wore my RAINY LAKE sweatshirt on our last trip to L.A., and it brought back great memories. We talk about ‘the girls’ who come out from Dryden every year to see us. We laugh about all of our airport episodes. We are continually grateful when we walk into the large Manitoba Prairie Quilters guild meetings, and they know who we are….just like we remember who all of them are. And in-between, we get a few surprising e-mails or phone calls from kindred spirits that we have never met face to face…but truly brighten our day. Thank you to all of you that we have bumped into on this journey.

And finally, Cori and I had another one of our marathon phone conversations today….and the results will be seen by all of those attending our Hometown Retreat this year. We have big plans!!! And we hope that you will all be pleased.

And on my final, final note..I am going to ask you a question. What cliché have you found to be true? Just leave your answer in the reply box, and we will be sure to enjoy your wisdom.

Myra.