My name is Katie Buesch. I grew up in Southern California and moved up to Northern California in 2014 to go to college. I got lucky and found a job here (then a different job which is where I’m at now) so I’ve been here ever since.

My mom taught my sister and I how to quilt when we were pretty young- I remember my first quilt was made on an old Singer (perhaps the coveted featherweight?) in a class that I attended with my mom and sister. I dabbled in it every once in a while for the next 10 years or so growing up but it was always something my mom did on weekends, usually while watching reruns of Monk, Criminal Minds, CSI, or more recently M*A*S*H.

My mom had given me one of her sewing machines my second year of college- a bulk of a metal White brand sewing machine. I think it’s from the 1980s or early 1990’s. It’s no sleek beauty but it works and works and works. It hung out in my closet for a while until my last semester of college, when I, along with my college roommate, went to a fabric store and I threw down for fabric to make a split rail fence quilt- a redo of the first quilt I ever made. My goal was to make it all on my own, reading a pattern and without help from my mom besides maybe calling with questions every now and again.

I cut some strips. It sat for a few months. I cut some more strips, maybe sewed them together. It sat for a few more months. I moved to live at a State Park for a seasonal job. I began cutting the 90 some squares I needed to make the quilt while hanging out with someone else who lived at the park and when I went to piece them together- they didn’t fit. I had cut every block 1 inch too short due to measuring with my cutting mat and starting at 1 rather than 0. The blocks sat for a few more months. My Mom came up to visit and rescued it from quilting purgatory, offering to cut the squares to make them work. That particular trip, she also taught me how to embroider using iron on patterns and tea towels.

From there, I went on to producing many many many snarky cross stitches, frequently alongside my friend Jenn who had learned cross stitching from a relative, sold some stitches in a local shop and to some friends, then messed up my arms from stitching and archery- so I flipped over to quilting. And I moved once, then again.

I became more interested in quilting while working on making a quilting exhibit for the museum I worked at, and working on a grant to better document the many quilts housed at the museum, which was how the pretty active local quilters guild.

People have frequently referred to me as an old soul. As someone in my 20s who has lived enough to see that most of my acquaintances are decades older than me, I pretty much tend to agree with them. I don’t know why I’m this way, but it’s ok, because these crowds tend to have the best pot luck gatherings.

Nowadays, I sew on my mom’s trusty old hunk-of-metal White sewing machine or my 1952 Featherweight (an elegant hunk of metal). They’re trustworthy companions and I feel very cool when I can disassemble them to oil and clean them.

So here we go, on a blogging adventure. I don’t really have any idea where this will take me, but I paid for the name and went through the trouble of making a site so, might as well use it.