I made my first quilt in 1969 to take to college
with me. I don't know why I felt I needed a quilt but it,
ultimately, led me on the journey to here.
For 20+ years I work as a mainframe systems
programmer and IT manager, first for banks then at NIKE (a great
place to work BTW). In 1999 after my Y2K project work was done I
decided it was time to switch careers. My friend, Julie, had a
quilt shop at the time and gave me the chance to teach quilting
for her. As a joke I took home some of her fabric that was not
selling and designed a pattern using the fabric. Both sold out
so my new career as a quilt pattern designer started.
I like to think up new and better ways to do
things. I used to hate paper piecing, especially tearing out the
paper so I devised my own methods for paper piecing which were
published in my book Painless Paper Piecing. The book (out of
print but still available used online) tells you how to reuse
your plain (not freezer paper) paper pattern many times. It also
tells you how you can quickly and accurately place the fabric on
the foundation for sewing. No more ripping out.
A few years ago I started designing my own
continuous line quilting designs for use with my longarm. I used
EQ as my design program and then colored in the designs so I
could better see if the shapes were good. This led eventually to
my series of
Continuous Line Machine Applique patterns. (More
info on the technique here).
In 2008 (I think it was 2008) I became pattern
editor for American Quilter magazine. It is now 2011 and I am
still designing and editing- not much teaching however.
Something had to give. You can sometimes see me and my patterns
in my Quilt Design NW booth at quilt shows in the Pacific NW.
