Iris

I am the CEO of a family of 4, with two girls, ages 3 & 6. I live in Pleasant Hill, California.

I have always been a book worm and constantly daydreaming and wanting to be creative. I was never good at regular drawing and painting and tried crocheting, cross stitching and stamping. It wasn’t until I met my mother-in-law, an avid quilter who used to hand quilt professionally, that I found quilting 11 yrs ago. I fell in love with the feel of the fabric, the satisfaction of making shapes come alive with so many different textures and colors, the warmth of the final product.

As much as I love fabric and quilting (and paper and scrapbooking), and as much as I devoured Martha Stewart, design and makeover shows, and quilting and scrapbooking shows, I didn’t have very much confidence in myself nor in my artistic abilities. I agonized over simple choices to the point of never really making progress and avoiding my craft room for weeks at a time, not wanting to feel the discouragement when I couldn’t execute the ideas whirling in my head. I embarrassingly considered myself a “wannabe” quilter, not having produced more than a handful of small quilts. Mostly I just shopped and stocked-piled enough tools and fabric to open up my own store!

I discovered Twilight December 2008. I have always read obsessively, immersing myself in the story. And I’ve always had a thing for romantic vampires. But living under a rock so to speak, it wasn’t until the movie was coming out that I even heard about it. On Dec 6th at 9:30 pm I began the whirlwind journey that has forever altered my life. I quickly devoured the whole saga in 5 days, going on to devour every scrap of Stephenie’s website and scour the net for all things Twilight. That wasn’t enough. I had to get the audiobooks to feed my addiction (so far 10 revamps and counting) and my daily news consists of all things Twilight.

The story of Twilight has touched me in so many ways. It is the very best fantasy that my mind could never come up with. It brings out so many feelings of love and compassion and happiness in me that it’s become incorporated in my everyday life. Everything seems to relate to something in the story and I often find myself smiling with about “inside jokes”.

And something about the story of Twilight has awakened the inner Alice in me. Now I rejoice in coming into my craft room and being creative. I haven’t lost my perfectionism, but now I’m more likely to “just do it” and see how it comes out. And if it has to be redone, so be it. I feel liberated, free to make mistakes, to put myself out there and know that I’ll be accepted. I feel the NEED to work on all these ideas whirling in my head. I just feel an inspiration and enthusiasm I’ve never felt before.

And it’s been thrilling to discover a group of friends that I have several common interests with, whom I can bounce ideas off of and learn from.

My blocks for Stephenie's quilt





My Motto: buy it now, you don’t know if you’ll find it later!

Favorite Quilt Shop: the whole internet

Favorite Quilt Designer: Nancy Halvorsen

Favorite Quilt Tools: Bet-a-Seam Ripper, Trolley Needle Thread Controller

Favorite Book from the Twilight Series: Midnight Sun

Team: Team Edward

My blog: TBA