QUILT Magazine Asks…
What has been your most recent quilting “adventure”, “challenge” or “idea”?
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Our first book just came out! We haven’t decided if it has been an adventure or a challenge.
Two weeks before Christmas we were asked (out of the blue) if we would do a book. It was to be a book of Christmas projects, oh, 10 or 12. Well that didn’t sound too bad, so, of course, we said, “Yes!” We definitely thought of it as an adventure at that point … and then we were told that our deadline to have the projects designed and made and instructions completed was February 1. Our adventure turned into a major challenge (nightmare?).
If you have ever tried to get fabrics together over Christmas and New Years, then you know that shipping is very slow and lots of people (and even whole businesses) are on vacation over the holidays. (And don’t even get us started on the “sorry, but we are taking inventory right now” excuse for not shipping ASAP!) We had decided on polka dots as the theme for all of the projects in the book. We had a bunch of polka dots in our shop and a couple of Christmas collections and assorted prints that we used to get started. We began stitching the first projects the second week in February. The other fabrics and reels of ribbon started to arrive by the end of that week. We were off and running.
We stitched like crazy (and designed as we went along) for the next 3 weeks with the help of a couple of quilting friends (Thank you, Connie and Melany!). One of us is a morning person (Sandy) and one a night person (Sue). We usually get together to stitch about once a week. The rest of the time, Sandy is in the shop at 6 a.m. filling kit orders and working at her longarm quilting business while Sue is in her home office ordering fabrics and working as a freelance editor until 2 a.m. For those 3 weeks, we became all-day and nearly all-night people as we stitched just about every day, Sandy quilted the projects and Sue wrote instructions. When the last project came off the sewing machine, we looked at each other and said, “I don’t want to see you for at least 2 weeks!”
We were presented with the first copies of our book, Polka Dot Christmas, at a breakfast meeting with the publisher on the first day (May 14) of Spring Quilt Market. We were thrilled! And then, we were asked to autograph a few and to have a book signing on the second day of Market. That was when we realized we had another challenge (adventure?) ahead of us, autographing our book! What in the world would we write on the inside cover for the people who worked with us on the book, let alone those who came to the book signing? Well, we muddled our way through, signing one thing on one and something else on another. We were finally told by an experienced autograph-signer to just come up with something that we can write on every book. He was given several suggestions and loved one so much that several years later he is still using it.
So, we need your help! Please send your ideas for something that we can sign in our books. It should just be a few words (3 or 4), funny (we are definitely not gushy or serious), nice (we don’t want to offend anyone) and heartfelt (we are really thankful for the chance to do a book and to those who like it enough to buy it). Well, what do you think? Not so easy, is it!!
Sue and Sandy
Pine Tree Country Quilts www.pinetreecountryquilts.comTags: Sue Harvey and Sandy Boobar
About the Author: Sue Harvey & Sandy Boobar
Sue and Sandy have nearly 40 years of quilting experience between them. Sue began quilting in the mid-1980s after everyone in her family and all of her friends decided they didn’t have another inch of space for anything cross-stitched. Sandy started in the early 1990s because she was so jealous of a quilt that a friend had made that she learned how to make one of her own. They have been working together on quilt designs for five years. They each also have their own quilting business. In 2005, they decided to start collaborating on quilt designs, a fabric shop and kitting business. They formed Pine Tree Country Quilts, named because they each live in a grove of pine trees in the middle of Maine. They regularly design and make quilts for several magazines and fabric companies and put together fabric kits for their designs. They sell their kits and patterns to quilters around the world by phone and from their Web site, www.pinetreecountryquilts.com.
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