Desire to Inspire - May Challenger - Meet Brandy Pettit

 Meet Brandy Pettit- She took on the challenge of using "Jolly Ole Soul” by Barb Tourtillotte in the month of May 2019.

Hello everyone! My name is Brandy Pettit, and I am so glad to meet you!  I live in Walla Walla, WA with my husband John and our cats, Thomas and Belle.  John and I are both hands-on crafty people, he likes to work on his motorcycles (he has 5, 2 of them are works in progress and one is a race-only motorcycle) and I like to fiddle around in my garden when I am not quilting.  We celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary two weeks ago and went out to one of our favorite local restaurants, Tokyo Japanese Steakhouse.  We knew it might take a little time for our food to come out so we took our travel cribbage set and played a couple rounds before eating, which made the couple who was a few tables away laugh.  I taught John how to play cribbage when we were first getting to know each other, so we have been playing each other for over 10 years now!  It makes the game pretty special for us.

I have been quilting for 7 years now and just love it.  The desire to create a quilt just came to me one day, so I took my grandma's advice and took a beginner quilting class and was pretty much hooked.  I started blogging a year later in order to participate in a blog hop and in the hopes that it would keep me more on task (I am a victim of the "Ooh shiny!" syndrome...) and it helped, for a while anyway!

I joined the Walla Walla Valley Quilt Guild two years after I started quilting so that I could be around like-minded people and have made some really wonderful friends.  I have been in charge of sew-ins for the last two years and was nominated for vice-presidency this year.  That means I'm in charge next year, woohoo!

In October of 2017, we purchased a Handi Quilter Infinity and I started my longarm business, Blue Spool Sewing Room.  I have had so much fun getting to work on all the different quilts my customers bring me!  I tend to share photos on Instagram the most, as well as on my business Facebook page and occasionally on the blog.

Another thing I have loved with being part of the quilting community is the opportunity to test patterns for some designers and I really enjoy that process.  Proofreading runs in my family from my mom's side so I love being able to help get a pattern all ready for release!  I also really enjoy getting to make something no one else has yet, it's kind of thrilling.  Except for the part where you can't share it with anyone until the pattern writer is ready, sometimes that is months of waiting!

 

If I had to choose a favorite part of the quilting process I would say the part of piecing when the blocks start coming together and you really see the progress you are making, followed closely by those last couple stitches of quilting, when you know you are very nearly finished with the project.

So a little explanation on my Jolly Ole Soul projects: First of all, I am so happy that I had the good fortune of being chosen as May's Desire to Inspire Challenger.  First of all, I am pretty obsessed with Christmas fabric, and second, Barb, the designer of Jolly Ole Soul, is from Washington State too!  How awesome is that?  I hope I get to meet her someday! :)  When I first saw the Santa Blocks I knew I wanted to make a Walk About quilt (pattern by Ann Lauer for Grizzly Gulch Gallery) since it would give me the opportunity to show off some of those great prints.  I was originally planning to make a double-sided quilt using the large Santa panel as the "back" for the WalkAbout that I put together as the "front".  But when I got the panel side put together with those adorable present blocks, I couldn't part with it!  My sister (Jen) had claimed the quilt before I even received the fabric, so I said I would back her quilt with some snuggle fabric and she was actually pretty excited about that.  I chose a fancy edge-to-edge design with holly and berries for her quilt and gave her the quilt a couple days ago, along with a matching pillow, and you can see she is pretty happy.  I had a BLAST custom quilting the Santa pillow, I hope you can see the swirls in his beard!  The pillow was made using the leftover Santa block that I added 3-inch borders to (those were cut off the edges of the Repeat Santa Panel), making it finish about 16 inches square.  

I backed it with two pieces that were 16.5" x 10.5", which gave a nice overlap for the pillow sham.  I have not yet quilted the other top, I am waiting for John to decide whether or not I need to increase it to being bed sized or leave it as a lap quilt.  I also have to point out, two of the present blocks use fabric from the Desire to Inspire line I got to play with last year called Just Beachy, and they make me so happy!  Then I used the super cute cookies and letters to Santa fabric to make a cookie plate!  I used Mod Podge to glue it on the back side of the plate and it turned out so good!  I think I will have to make up some more, I still have a bit of fabric left and they will make excellent gifts for Christmas.  Especially when I fill them with cookies and candy!

I had a really lovely time working with this line from Henry Glass and I sure hope you feel inspired to get some Christmas gifts going!  I hope you will come to visit me on my blog (www.pamperedpettit.blogspot.com), on Instagram (@bluespoolsewingroom), or on Facebook!  You can even check out my quilting on my website, www.bluespoolsewingroom.com.  Happy Quilting!

Additional Quilt Photos:

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