branwyn1914

I've been sewing since I was 7. When I was 23, my mother gave me the sewing machine her mother had given her 30 years before, an after three decades of sitting in the closet, it still worked like a charm. I promptly set out to see what I could do with it, and the result was Belladonna Dolls, the dollmaking enterprise I ran for a year until I got a slightly more dependable job. I left dolls behind for quilting over the last year, but now I'm back for both of them.

The very first thing I ever tried to make, at age 7, was a doll. The second thing I tried to make was an embroidered sampler.

And then I tried making a little quilt for a neighbor's baby.

I've got rather better at all these things over the years.

I'm also trying my hand at container gardening for the first time, and drying the herbs I grow for potpourris and teas.

Tori Amos, Regina Spektor, Vienna Teng, Orenda Fink, John Tavener--think girls with pianos and sweeping voices and eccentric lyrics, and classical composers with an eerie modern twist.

I was an English major so this is an impossible question, but off the top of my head:

Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers The Language of Bees, Laurie R. King Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen Atonement, Ian McEwan A Hat Full of Sky, Thud, Terry Pratchett Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, JK Rowling Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke Shakespeare

The Seventh Seal, Lady Jane, Elizabeth & Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Austen and Shakespeare adaptations and mystery and detective shows, like Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes and Edward Petherbridge's Lord Peter Wimsey series.

• I always go a little bit up and over the call of duty in swaps. If the swap calls for 5 kinds of yarn, I'll throw in 7, etc.

• I love, love, love fat quarters, especially of bright or unusual patterns--the one thing I find distressing about traditional quilting tends to be the dull and unimaginative color combinations.

• I almost never use patterns for anything I make, but the one exception is doll heads---I find it impossible to craft spherical objects from cloth without a little guidance, and I'm always looking for new doll-head patterns.