I’m Caroline and I live in Corvallis, Oregon with my husband of 20+ years and our two children. By day I’m a scientist, I work full-time in the field of Plant Pathology. When I’m not working, or shuttling a child to a soccer game,  I’m sewing, designing or knitting. The creative process is an important part of my daily life and I really need to outlet my design ideas through the art of sewing, quilting and crafting in general.

I just started quilting a few years ago but I have been sewing all my life. My mother was a professional tailor before she retired and I remember using her scraps to make tiny purses for myself when I was a child. I spent many hours in her sewing room watching and later helping her and started sewing clothes for myself when I was in high school. I put sewing on hold for a long time after college while I was studying and then working towards my career. I started back to sewing when my kids were little which made me realize that I really enjoyed the process of sewing and designing not to mention the lovely fabrics and colors. When my kids no longer wanted mom-made clothes, I moved on to making purses for myself and still design those today. Quilting was a natural progression and a way to use up that fabric stash that I was starting to accumulate. Through the online community of quilting bloggers I got involved in a foundation pieced block quilt-along in 2012 and ended up designing the winning block for a contest. I was pretty much hooked after that and soon discovered that EQ was a much easier way to facilitate the block design process. Since then I have designed many foundation-pieced quilt blocks which are available through the Craftsy website and on my blog.

EQ makes it incredibly easy to divide my images up into sections that are easier to sew and to create foundation blocks. It does the hard work of adding seam allowances automatically and the whole design process is a breeze.  I could not live without EQ.

My online alter ego is Trilliumdesign and I blog about my sewing escapades at trilliumdesign.blogspot.com.  I have previously authored work in the Fat-Quarterly e-zine, and in an upcoming publication with Stash books.  I can always be found interacting with the quilting community through Flickr. My  design inspiration comes from the colors and textures of textiles with a strong leaning towards architectural shapes. My personal crafting philosophy is that you can make anything if you set your mind to it. If you can dream it, you can make it!

My Etsy shop can be found at trilliumshoppe.etsy.com where I destash, and sell my purse patterns. I’m so thrilled to have the opportunity to share my love of sewing with everyone and would like to extend a big thank-you to the EQ folks for inviting me talk about my passions.

See more of Caroline’s work here:

www.trilliumdesign.blogspot.com
www.trilliumshoppe.etsy.com
twitter.com/trilliumdesign
http://tinyurl.com/trilliumFacebook