Hello Pittsburgh!

Doug and I have been having so much fun running our little business (Sweetbriar Sisters).  Doug keeps the books and takes care of order fulfillment while I make new patterns, keep up the website and take care of customer service.  We'd tried a couple different little side businesses for me to work on during the day before, but all of them required deadlines that ultimately made me too sick.  This one is working out so much better since I can design on days I feel well, and on days when I'm too sick to work, no one is hounding me to finish a project. (woohoo!) It's become like the ultimate hobby for us- I can't even tell you how many nights we sit up talking about new business ideas.

We've had our printed patterns in stores for over a year now.  We've gotten comfortable enough with the wholesaling world that we feel ready to take the next step and try to get our stuff into a larger number of stores.  So, in the middle of May we flew out to Pittsburgh to attend the International Quilt Market (the biggest trade show in the sewing industry- basically everybody in the professional quilting/sewing world gets together to see if you want to work together).  It was fantastic!  We learned so much and were able to meet so many people who will help our business grow.

We had so much fun finding our designs in different booths throughout Market!

I have no idea why someone would put a bunch of bean bags in a networking lounge during a Quilting trade show (aka: an entire industry run by little old ladies who haven't been able to comfortably get in and out of bean bags for decades.) But I was sure glad they were there!  We spent a good amount of time in this corner with me resting between checking out booths.

The first night as we got settled into our hotel room, I just had to laugh.  Neither of us like to travel (I know, I know- you find that statement personally offensive.  Everyone does every time I mention it.  I'm sorry- it's just the truth.) and until this trip the only traveling we'd ever done together was to see family.  (And trust me, if there was a way to see them without traveling, we would have gone that route.)  It made me laugh to think that after 7 years the thing that lured us into our first 'vacation' was a trip to Pittsburgh for a business meeting.  It's a good thing the whole 'lack of travel desire' thing is mutual, otherwise one of us would definitely be pretty disappointed by now.  :)

After the trip we drove up to my parent's house (I guess not even a business trip in the luxurious city of Pittsburgh could get us to travel completely on its own...) which is just a couple hours from where we stayed in PA.  It was so great to see them.  And it was the first time I'd seen Spring in the East for over 12 years- the trees are so magical this time of year!  I can't believe I just grew up thinking that magical landscape was was normal!