After a long long vacation away from blogging.....LET'S START OVER WITH QUILT ADDICTION

I really don't have a knock-your-socks-off excuse for ignoring my blog for the last four months.  I could lie and say that my dog ate my computer.....but he's only a little dog and the computer wouldn't fit.  I could lie and say I volunteered for a risky mission to the moon.....but there's probably wi-fi there. 

So instead, I'm just going to start over. 

Hi, my name is Tricia Lynn Maloney and I'm a quilt addict.

This is me, Quilt Addict Extraordinaire! 



Maybe you're not a quilt addict, so let me tell you about the life of a quilt addict. 

A long time ago, I started collecting antique quilts, blocks, fabrics, patterns/books.  If it was about quilting, I saved it.  Of course, eventually I decided to teach myself to quilt.  Interesting experience.  Resulted in my first completed quilt -- hand stuffed with polyester fiber and hand quilted for that homey "biscuit quilt" style that's all the rage.....somewhere.  Blue.  Lots of blue.  Didn't matter what the fabric content was....it just had to be blue.  But the amazing thing is that after "Ugly Quilt" I kept right on quilting. 

I started making quilty stuff for everyone I know because I really didn't know any better.  Now I even prowl the streets at night looking for more "quilt victims".......  Okay, not really, but didn't that sound really scary? (I'm usually too busy quilting, of course.)

I found a job working in a great quilt shop and there my quilting life really exploded because I could work for FABRIC!  (If you work in a quilt shop, you know exactly what I mean by this.)  I learned all kinds of important stuff while working at the shop like free motion quilting, fabric dyeing, how to cut eight layers of fabric at a time without cutting my hand off.  But this still wasn't enough so I started designing my own quilts.  Then I started teaching quilt classes.  OH NO!  This is a terrible disease and highly contagious, I've learned.  I even found friends......friends who quilt.  This just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn't it?

Then one day, I decided that I wanted to write a book. It took a long time for everyonthing to fit together, but with the help of a -- shall I say it -- quilt friend, I finally got connected to a publisher.  My first book, ORPHAN BLOCK QUILTS, came out in 2010.   Every quilter's dream, right?  To see your name on the front of a book in print.  That felt really good so I begain to make plans to get my name on the front of another book.  Of couse, I kinda got sidetracked by the quilt magazines and started getting my work published in magazines and other publications. 

Then I went back to the second book idea and it happened.  Really.  My second book came out last year (2013) and was called A RUSSIAN JOURNEY IN QUILTS:  THE STORY OF NICHOLAS AND NINA FILATOFF.  This books is so very special to me because it tells a story shared by my grandma and it tells the story with quilts.  Who knew you could tell a story using quilts?

2014 has been an interesting year for me.  The last time I blogged -- back in May -- I was blogging from International Quilt Market in Pittsburgh.  It was so totally MY MARKET.  Of course, it helped that I live less than 2 hours north of Pittsburgh, so things weren't unfamiliar to me.  AND my dear friend (who quilts of course), Leslie, went with me -- which was good because Leslie is from Pittsburgh.  Of course, instead of a noisy uncomfortable hotel, we stayed with another good friend of mine, Isaac (who does NOT quilt....yet) in his very comfortable home. 

Anyway, Spring Market in Pittsburgh was an amazing experience.  I met a lot of great people and the inspiration that I took away from Market was staggering and a bit overwhelming.  Probably one of the most important inspirations was that I wanted to write another quilt book.  I decided that I didn't want to do a ton of research this time (like my first two books) and I wanted it to have fun quilt projects.  After I got home from Market, after a short procrastination period, I wrote and submitted a book proposal.  AND IT WAS ACCEPTED very quickly -- faster even than my second book.

So this is where I am at right now with my quilt addiction. Did you know that writing a book is a great way to explore your quilt addiction?  You get to spend time shopping for fabrics, petting fabrics, cutting fabrics.......AND YOU GET TO SAY "I AM WORKING."  Ha!

In my next blog I'm going to talk about who this book project is SO SO different than the first two.