A NEW ADVENTURE

Those who know me know that I love to quilt and I love to travel.  Quite coincidentally I’ve been doing both of these things since 2003.  Both of these passions of mine have now led me to a brand new type of adventure.  This is how I’ve gotten to where I am now and why I've chosen the name quiltingtravelerdi for this new adventure.

TRAVELING

My husband and I have always enjoyed traveling and we’ve been to almost every state.  He had frequently traveled internationally with his job but the farthest I’d been was Canada and Mexico.  We took our first international trip together in 2003 which was when I became hooked on adventure travel, which was what we did for the next 16 years.  We both share the adrenalin rush of visiting other countries.  The most exciting places were where we couldn’t speak the language, the culture was very different from ours, including the food, clothing, housing, and customs.

SEWING

I learned to sew when I was a child, first making doll clothes then eventually clothes for myself.  As time went on I sewed clothes for my children, shirts for my husband, and a multitude of sewing related crafts.  I found sewing quite enjoyable and immensely satisfying.

In 2003 I took a six week beginning quilting class.  I found I experienced the same sense of enjoyment and satisfaction that sewing clothes gave me, only now I could make quilts to give as gifts or to use in my home.

The first few years I made quilts using traditional patterns, but after awhile I started to explore art quilts, which were becoming popular.  This was what I was looking for - a way to express my creativity and turn my sketches based on travel photos into quilts that I could hang on the wall.

During the last six years I’ve been designing quilt patterns using Electric Quilt 8.  I feel that the patterns I design still have an art feel to them but are made in a more traditional way with quarter inch seams and blocks, rather than raw edge fusible appliqué which was how I created all my original art quilts that hang throughout my home.

NEW ADVENTURE

It’s been several years now that I’ve been designing quilt patterns on the computer and making many of these patterns into quilts.   During this time I’ve been buying different items from the Etsy website and in the back of my mind I thought about opening my own shop someday.  As the years have gone by the thought of having my own on-line shop has gotten stronger until I finally decided, I’m really going to do this!

I didn’t realize how much time and effort I was going to have to put into getting my on-line Etsy shop ready to open.  The patterns I had designed that I was going to start selling had to be in PDF format, plus all the information that was needed to fill out the Etsy form was a real challenge.  I’m not one to give up so I marched on each day working diligently on getting all my i’s dotted and t’s crossed.  

I finally finished setting up everything that was required and this week I opened my new shop:  quiltingtravelerdi.  If you’re interested in taking a look, the Etsy link is:  https://quiltingtravelerdi.etsy.com.     I’ll be adding more patterns as the weeks go on so please check back often, and I’d appreciate it if you would pass on my link to any quilters you know.

Thank you very much,

Diane