It is time for the second post in our series of staff profiles. This week I am up.
I am the oldest of 6 kids with two little brothers and three little sisters. I am married to my high school sweetheart and we will be celebrating our 8th wedding anniversary in November. Together, as of today we have four boys, the fourth born this morning, May 01 2018. Our oldest will be 7 this fall and is currently finishing up Grade 1. The next is nearly five and will be starting Kindergarten in September. My third son is 3 and does everything he can to keep up with his older brothers. We live 10 minutes from Coaldale on a half acre lot that has lots of room for my boys to burn their energy, and just enough yard work to keep my husband busy without getting overwhelmed. One of my sisters lives 2 houses down from me and she watches my children while I am working.
For the past two years I have been working at Chicken Feed Quilts twice a week, but I am currently on maternity leave. Before that I worked for my dad on the farm as well as at Coaldale Nurseries for 5 or 6 years.
I love hot weather, though I think that if lived in a climate that was always warm I would actually miss the changing seasons. There is something to be said for crisp fall mornings and changing leaves, cold, snowy winter days, and the first green leaves of spring.
Like most of the members of my family I love to water ski, my husband has recently learned to love it, and 3 of my boys enjoy it as well, so it is a fun activity that we can all do together. My husband and I also play softball together, though I will be watching from the sidelines this year.
My mom taught me to to sew at a young age and I sewed mainly doll clothes. As I grew older I set sewing aside.
I took up quilting soon after I was married but I didn’t do a lot of it until about 3 years ago. When I first started I only liked quilt patterns that were composed of squares or rectangles. Stars and triangles did not hold any appeal for me, and sampler quilts were not my thing. If you look at quilts that I have done in the past couple years though, things have definitely changed in that department. I now love Elizabeth Hartman’s patterns and have made several large quilts and a few pillows using them.
One of my favourite quilts is a Block Of The Month I did by Sew Kind Of Wonderful called Urbanologie, and the other is another Block Of The Month, this one by Sherri from A Quilting Life.
I usually will have one or two difficult or time consuming projects on the go and work on easier quilts at the same time. I love working with little pieces, but sometimes I just need a quick finish.
Aside from quilts I enjoy making bags and have made several wallets, backpacks, zipper pouches, tote bags, purses and duffle bags.
I almost never make the same pattern twice and this applies to quilts, wall hangings, runners and bags. There are so many patterns out there that I love to try a new one each time.
My favourite fabric designers are definitely Sherri and Chelsi, a mother daughter team who design for Moda. I love the colours and the prints in their lines and they have awesome low volume prints in each line that work great for scrappier backgrounds. I also love Sherri’s patterns they are so fun and are written really well. I met Sherri at Quilt Market last fall and she is so sweet and down to earth.
I also love Art Gallery Fabrics, the quality of their fabric is incredible and it is amazing to work with. Pat Bravo and Maureen Cracknell are probably my favourite designers for this company.
I, like Esther, work best in lines of fabric but I am getting better at putting together projects with fabric from all over the store. In fact Urbanologie is a quilt in which I pulled fabric from throughout Chicken Feed Quilts rather than sticking with a particular line or designer.
I hope to ease back into working at the shop again this summer, but we will see how that goes. I will still pop in and out though as I can't seem to stay away and need to see all the new fabric when it comes in. I will also continue writing the blog during my leave.
Have a fantastic week!
Kayla
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