If you’d said to me a year ago, “Tammy, you’ll be designing quilts for a living by this time next year,” I would have looked at you like you had three heads! 

Yet, here I am.  And loving every quilty moment of it!

Along with French vocabulary, my mom taught me as a young girl to sew and embroider, cut and paste.  To create.  I remember days spent with her and her mother around our dining room table, each of us working on our own projects and having lovely conversations.  The summer I learned to sew, my grandmother helped me design and create my first skirt, with a matching scarf and purse. I even remember the fabulous fabric: a rainbow sherbet-colored seersucker, pinks and tangerines, and white.  Yummy yum yum.  I wore the entire ensemble out to dinner that night. 

There’s a reason I’m a quilt designer, not a fashion designer. But we don’t have time to go into that here. 

So.  Quilts it is. 

I left that dining room table to do things like go to college, start a career, blah, blah, blah.  All the while, Mom was quilting.  Quilting, quilting, lalala.  About ten years ago, Mom finally roped me in, too…

Mom:  Come on, Tam, you’ll LOVE it!

Tam:  Mom, I don’t NEED another project!

And off we went to the quilt shop.  I haven’t looked back since.

When Mom passed away last year, clearing out her sewing room fell to me.  With a heavy heart, I placed fabrics, and patterns, and notions, and her old Bernina into boxes to take home.  All the while, finding sketches.  Ideas for quilts hastily scratched onto bits of graph paper, old receipts, cocktail napkins.  Each time I found one, I’d place it into an envelope.  Soon, the envelope was bulging, and I had to resort to a file folder. Eventually, and I kid you not, I came home with one of those plastic file cart thingies, chock-full of sketches, ideas, notes…all about quilts.

So. I’m picking up where she left off.  It’s as if we’re sitting at that dining room table, stitching away, and cackling over something silly.

I’ve taken her sketches, played around them a bit to make them more my own.  Mom was a very traditional, very precise quilter. I am not. My style is very wonky, a riot of color, and not serious in the least. And though our tastes were different, each time I finished one of my wacky quilts, Mom would say, “Oh, T, I love it!”

So, here they are.

Oh, and I’d like to say one last thing about my quilt patterns.  These designs are not about precision and perfection.  When you’re making one of my quilt patterns for yourself or someone you love, enjoy the process.  Don’t get stuck on matching corners, perfect seams, impossibly straight lines.  Say it with me:  “We love wonkiness!  We applaud imperfection!”  The important thing is to be quilting.  Quilt and be happy!  Don’t stress.  Promote world peace, one wonky quilt at a time.

Cheers,

Tammy