This is Darling Harbour, early on a cold winter morning, on the first day of the quilt show. I'm enjoying the colder weather so far.

The first three days of the show have flown by, and we have been busy. We met up with lots of friends that we see only at these events, so there was a lot to catch up on. Then there is the shopping and looking at the quilts themselves, and coffee with more friends.

We were sitting with 9 of our mates when someone tapped Mereth on the shoulder and said ‘Would you be Mereth or Keryn?’ It was ChookyBlue, who is a blogfriend that we have never met before, so we had a big chat and arranged to meet the next day and spend time together. Our other friends were suitably freaked out that a total stranger had recognised us and introduced herself. Which is really odd, seeing we all met on an email list about 7 years ago!

This afternoon our friends Laurie and Brenda took us out to the famous Patchwork Products in Rydalmere. This shop is set up in a garage behind a normal suburban house, and has fantastic fabric deals. There is a big ginger tabby cat to welcome the shoppers, and floor to ceiling stacks of delicious fabrics. We always have a lovely time rummaging through everything and choosing armfuls of material, for about half the amount it would normally cost. We were quite restrained this time, but it’s still a decent haul. Brenda thinks it’s so amusing to watch us country kids go crazy in the candy store.

On the way back to the convention centre we stopped at QuiltSmith, another lovely shop, jam-packed with the sort of reproduction fabrics that are our favourite. OMG! We could have spent hours there, it was so wonderful. Even Brenda was tempted to buy a morsel or two. We were delivered back to the hotel in a very happy mood.

My purchases today included a wonderful book about Chinese artifacts, that was being thown out for $4.95. The images in it are amazing, and I would love to interpret some of them in fabric. It sounds silly, but the idea of cutting my fabric up holus-bolus into strange shaped pieces has stopped me from ever attempting a pictorial quilt. I need to loosen up my attitude and take the scissors to the cloth and just do it. Maybe this is the year to try out new styles and techniques and expand my skills.

While I’m working the Statler it’s interesting to hear the comments as people go past. I often hear “That’s cheating!”, to which I reply, ‘No, that’s Evolution” I’m sure our great-grandmothers would have been truly fascinated to see where quilting has gone in the last hundred years. There are lots of teenagers attending the show on school excursions, and even the boys are amazed at the computerised machines. These kids are the ones who will carry on our craft, and I just wonder where it will go in their hands.