(You’ll be able to check out Katy’s stop on the blog tour here. And of course she has a copy of the book to give away. Thanks Katy…)
I first met Katy in person at Quilt Market in Salt Lake City; it was my first one. I was completely lost and overwhelmed. Everything seemed to be all over the place and navigating the space itself – let alone all of the people – felt like a completely inscrutable undertaking. I didn’t know anybody; I had been quilting for all of about six months and I was quickly trying to learn my way around because I was going to be launching Pear Tree at the next Market, in Houston.
That said, Katy wasn’t a complete stranger; she is one of the first people I met in the land of social media, but that only goes so far. Nine times out of ten when I meet someone I know from the interwebs I have an awkward conversation (because I am infinitely awkward) and then hide, but Katy would have none of that. I didn’t ask if I could tag along as she (and the Fat Quarterly crew) walked the floor, I was just kinda brought a long. Perhaps a bit like a lost puppy; I think she felt a bit sorry for me as I had utter confusion written all over my face.
As the years have passed Katy has done more and more amazing things, helping to make Fat Quarterly a fixture in the quilting world, endless quilts, and now her own show. But most of all she keeps reminding me to just make some damn stuff. It ain’t rocket science. In fact, I owe my biggest, most insane, and still ongoing project to her: the No-Repeat Scrap Vomit Quilt…
Now, Katy’s Scrap Vomit was a bit of a phenomenon for a while on the interwebs, and she was able to produce SV with amazing speed. (I still don’t know how she does it.) Well, Katy tapped into the neurotic in me and I decided to do my own SV without using a single print more than once. The next thing I knew I had scraps coming to me from all over the world, which was incredible. But then I had to sort them, make sure that there were in fact no repeats, and then trim them, and then recheck for repeats. In all that process took nearly four months, which is why the top is still being pieced. One of these days…
I share that story because Katy really taught me the power of the interwebs when it comes to quilting. It is because of SV that I had the confidence to do two quilts for the book that were made extensively through internet collaboration: Sum of Interrelations and Excess.
Through Katy I learned about Bees at a distance, and started to really connect to a quilting community, and ideas about what quilting can be in the 21st century. I owe a lot to Katy, but will always return to those days in SLC when I followed her around slowing becoming less confused…
Thank you Katy, and thanks so much for being part of the blog tour…
-t
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