I have been sewing for over twenty five years and have had a wide variety of interests over that time. I began by sewing for myself and my children. When the chidren were young, I wanted to be able to do work from home, so I started doing wedding and other special occasion clothing. I also do work for a number of home decorating designers and upholsterers, sewing pillows, curtains, and other items for the home. I continue to have wedding and prom dresses arrive on my doorstep each year from referrals from friends and former customers, but I have started to concentrate more on my quilting, in recent years.
I had done a few small quilts over the years, but I started to become more interested in quilting when our family made a quilt for our mother’s sixtieth birthday. Every one of her seven children and eight grandchildren did some sewing, cutting, or embroidery on that quilt. It was a very special project. I became very interested in how you could combine such a wide variety of fabrics and colors and the quilt just seems to blend everything together beautifully. I am usually drawn to traditional quilt designs, but always seem to make my own “adjustments” to the patterns to reflect the feeling or theme for of each new project.
I have been collecitng quilting fabrics for many years now, and a few years ago decided it was time to become more productive, so I purchased a long-arm quilting machine. It has been great fun learning this new type of sewing. When you work on this type of machine, the sewing machine moves and the fabric stays in place. This makes it very easy to sew designs on to the tops of the quilts. I started out praticing on my own quilts and then began to work on other peoples quilts as my confidence grew.
Like me, a lot of people enjoy doing the piece work on a quilt, but often times the top may never be completed as people start on new, more interesting projects. I really get excited by each new person that brings a quilt to me to be finished. Each quilt has a special person or event that the creator has in mind and each has it’s own special issues that need to be handled. I hope that you will come and share your special project with me.