Hi, I’m Tina, a software developer by day and a quilter, textile designer, and pattern designer at all other times. My new website is ModGeometry and you can find me on Instagram at @sashikostyle. This spring I had the privilege of having two of my quilts in the Andover booth at Spring Market in Pittsburgh. It happened only with the help of quilters that I had not previously met. This story is a testament to the generosity of quilters.
I am a Pearl Bracelets fan from way back so I there was no question I was going to get the Pearl Bracelets tonals once they came out. I spent hours trying to come up with a design. I wanted to use all the colors fairly evenly. Because of the numbers of fabrics and how they
matched up, I knew it that the quilt had to be based on hexagons. Since I have already made a hexagon quilt using Pearl Bracelets, called PB-Complete, I made the hexagons in this quilt using triangles.
I was on the West Coast when Daryl of Andover Fabrics saw my Instagram teasers of my quilt. She asked if I could send her the quilt in time for Spring Market in Pittsburgh. Of course I said yes, even though I had not started sewing the quilt! Once I got back home, I had to make a trip to Vermont and then I was off to New Orleans for a work conference. How in the world was I going to get this quilt sewn and quilted?
I was fortunate in that I didn’t have to stay over in Vermont on Friday. That left me all day Saturday to work on the quilt. I started sewing Saturday morning and was done sometime in the evening. When I started to sew the quilt back, which I planned just to piece together in squares, my husband suggested I mimic the front by piecing it into six large triangles. I said, “You realize this is going to add hours to my project.” He understood and promptly got out his pencil, straight edge and construction paper and with some trigonometry we created the pattern pieces. By the time I finished that and the binding and sleeve it was 4 am. I had to get up at 7 am for a 9 o’clock flight to New Orleans.
Next problem. How was I going to get this quilted? I searched online and found a New Orleans quilt store, Mes Amis Quilt Shop. I called and asked if they had a long arm to rent. Denise, the owner, said they didn’t. I asked if she knew a quilter and she suggested Cindy Braiwick of CeCe Quilts. So, I called Cindy and she agreed to quilt it for me. I planned to take a taxi from the airport to her home. I packed my hand quilting supplies just in case this wasn’t going to work out. I have yet to hand quilt, however, but I was willing to give it a try.
Cindy sent me an email that I got just before I left Boston. She and her friend Patty offered to pick me up at the airport, take me to Cindy’s house to discuss the quilt and back to my hotel. I was so surprised by their generosity. When I got to New Orleans, they asked me if I wanted to go out to eat! We had a nice lunch, discussed the quilting at Cindy’s house and even went quilt magazine shopping at a few places before they dropped me off at my hotel. We had just met and were already old friends!
The following Tuesday Cindy returned my quilt and I loved her work! She came and got me at my hotel and took me over to Denise’s shop so that I could sew the binding on. Denise’s shop closed at 4:30 but we didn’t get there until almost 4:30 due to traffic. Denise graciously waited while I sewed that binding on. It was my first time doing 120 degree angles. I had so carefully preserved my points when I was sewing the quilt top and had all but forgotten about them when I sewed the binding on — I was so nervous because I was keeping Denise waiting.
I had two days to bind it. I had previously asked a friend of mine to join me in New Orleans after the conference. We had site-seeing planned so I couldn’t very well spend the days sewing the binding on, so I worked on it late for two nights. One day, I took it with me during our tour bus ride through New Orleans. Yes, I was tour bus binding! I didn’t bring scissors so I had to cut the binding with a nail clipper, when I was joining it! These were serious “MacGyver” and “make it work” moments!
Well, it was all worth it because I sent my Prism and my PB-Complete quilts off to Pittsburgh and they reached Daryl in time for her sales presentation and were in the Andover booth! I am forever indebted to Cindy, Patty and Denise for helping me out in a bind. I am always amazed by the generosity of quilters. You can always ask a quilter to
help you when you’re in need and she’ll do whatever she can to help you. It’s such an amazing community that I am so proud to be a part of!
