I live in Leeds, UK, with my husband, a very energetic toddler, my two kitties and pretty much wall-to-wall quilts and fabric! Working full time and being a mum cuts down my sewing time but I do manage to squeeze quilting into just about every waking moment.
I have been sewing on and off for most of my life, which was inevitable being the daughter of a tailor and dressmaker - it’s in my genes. My first sewing machine was a Holly Hobby wind-up one that I got one year for Christmas and I would get that out whenever Mum got hers out. I (badly) made handbags and Sindy clothes and was never very satisfied with how they turned out.
I got my first ‘grown-up’ sewing machine for my 21st birthday while studying for a degree in Textile Design and Technology at Huddersfield University and had marvellous fun sewing bits of knitting, paper, masking tape, lumpy handmade felt and anything else that would fit under the foot. Not surprisingly, that sewing machine is now dead and lives in the great sewing machine graveyard in the sky.
I had been itching to make a patchwork quilt for what seemed like forever and finally I bit the bullet about seven years ago, never imagining that it would suck me in and lead to the biggest obsession I’ve ever had!
I (infrequently!) blog atwww.flossyblossy.blogspot.comand participate in Flickr swaps and quilting bees (as flossyblossy) as often as I can find the time.
In April 2010 I co-founded Fat Quarterly which is a quarterly e-zine (electronic magazine) for modern stitchers. The e-zine contains a mix of quilt patterns, small project patterns, articles and design challenges, and in 2011 the Fat Quarterly crew released our first book: The Fat Quarterly Shape Workshop for Quilters.
Other than published patterns in Fat Quarterly and The Fat Quarterly Book, my pattern designs have been published in a number of collaborative books and I have taught classes at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, at the Fat Quarterly Community Retreats held in London each year and at my local quilt shop, The Skep.
I collect fabric like others collect Lladro figurines and already have more quilts and fabric than I know what to do with, but the more quilts I make the more I want to make! I will most likely just stack them up and stroke them!