Wanna Know Wednesday - A Little About Me

This week I'm departing from the usual techniques or tutorials that I've been posting.  This week I'd like to share a little bit about myself.

I have been quilting since late 2007 and have loved it ever since.  I first got hooked on "old fashioned" crafts when I was in high-school.  I started doing needlepoint and while those first few patterns were quick and rather simple, I have graduated to doing very complex patterns that take a long time to complete.  The last one I finished was a version of Van Gogh's Starry Night painting, which took me 3 years to complete.

By my estimates, the next one I am working on may take me close to 6 years to finish because it is so large.  The row shown below is one row and there are 6 total rows on this picture, so its a fairly large image.

I am only a "part-time" quilter as I work in an office 5 days a week.  I work for a very large company and I am a technical leader for several engineers located in the US and in India.  My degree from school is a mechanical engineering degree and part of the reason I find quilting fun and interesting is that a lot of it is based upon math.  Quilting allows me to merge my engineering side (doing the math and figuring out the best way to construct something) with my more creative side.  My "real" work causes me to work ~50 hours per week and when I factor in my commute, I'm spending 55-60 hours away from the house during the week.

While I don't consider myself to be a great quilter, people who have seen my quilts say that I truly have a lot of talent and that my quilts are very professional in quality.  I think part of that comes from my engineering side and the fact that I am a bit of a perfectionist.  While I don't try to get every little corner and triangle point to line up just right, I do try to get them close.  If they are off a few threads, it doesn't really bother me.  if they are off by 1/8", I fix it.

Someday I would like to make quilting a business.  I think I would like to be able to quilt other quilters' quilts -- how many times can you put the word quilt in a sentence and actually have it make sense? :-)  -- at some point in the future.  I do have a mid-arm machine with a 6" throat space.  I am able to use some pre-made pantographs, but I also design my own to fit the available space that I have on my machine.  I would love to be able to do the quilting for others if they don't have the desire or means to do it themselves.  I see a huge market for this as I know many quilters who love to piece their tops and then just don't want to deal with man-handling a quilt under the small throat of a regular sewing machine.  I also know that in my area there are a few people who do quilting for others, but there always seems to be a waiting list.  It would seem that if there's a waiting list, there is a demand for the craft.

I may do a few other of these types of posts in the future to mix it up a little with the techniques/tutorials that I plan to put on here.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations