Teresa Coates (the Modern Quilt Perspectives blog tour)…

(Go read Teresa’s post for the Modern Quilt Perspectives blog tour; it is a beautiful post, and Teresa is just awesome…)

I have this list. Well, I haven’t actually written it down, but it is in my head and that is a good as writing it down, at least most of the time. It’s the list of people I want to work with all the time if I ever hit the point where I can actually afford to work with people all the time and stuff. It may sound like an arrogant list to have, but I don’t think small; you should know that about me by now. But back to the list…

It isn’t a very long list because in general I am pretty skeptical about people (another thing I assume you all know about me by now). It is not that I am the suspicious sort; if anything I am too trusting, which has time and again gotten me into trouble, or at least left me pissed off. Nonetheless, I have this list, this short list.

One more thing about this list though, it isn’t the list of everybody I like; there are a bunch of you out there. This is a different list, a strange one, one solely populated by the people I somehow think get the world in a way that would synch up amazingly with the way I do, people that get it right down into the fiber of stuff. It is the list of THEM, or perhaps US, or something like that. It is a very secret list. It is my list.

That said, and to hopefully move this monologue into a less creepy golumesque direction, Teresa Coates is firmly on that list. I don’t actually know just when we first met; I know it was at Market, but pretty much every Market is a blur of exhaustion and medication for me. I have a vague recollection of talking too much and probably leaving her with the impression that I am stark raving mad (I leave a lot of people with that impression). But I was also left with the impression that this woman was someone to know, someone who saw bigger pictures, someone who had a vision for things that truly matter.

Whether it is her passion for this fabricky, sewerly landscape, or her abiding commitment to the children of the Tam Ky orphanage in Vietnam, or the basic reality of her making it through days, and ability I profoundly admire as I so often doubt my own ability to do just that, Teresa is one of the true inspirations in this industry. No, she isn’t the one who sets out to inspire, but for anyone who looks closely, who pays attention, it is right there. To put it in my usual vernacular: Teresa Coates, you are effing awesome and I want everyone to know that!!!

And that is why Teresa is on that list, the usually secret list. Well, that is a little bit of it, but trust me the list of reasons Teresa is on that very short list is a very long list, but I will leave it to you to find out more, and hopefully add her to your list. And with any luck Teresa will be running this show (the whole quilty, fabricky universe) before long, ‘cause it would be a much better place if she did. Fingers crossed…