My February Star

I wanted to post this today, as I wanted you all to meet Pat and to love her as much as I do. Her work as been so inspiring to me, and we have become friends too. Enjoy her interview, and if you don't know her, please do visit her blog called A Little of This and a Little of Pat. As I don't feel that well, I will let her interview and pics of her work speak for themselves.

Interview for February
Name:__Pat Casadei_________

· A Bit About Me: I am a retired elementary school teacher, who also taught English as a Second Language (ESL) to adults. I have been married for nearly 43 years and have two daughters and three granddaughters. While most of my life was spent in New Jersey, we retired to southern Delaware in the winter of 2004 and love it here. I managed to acquire a part-time job doing medical transcription work when a friend was giving the job up 4 years ago. I had helped her with it when she was busy, so I took it over and it is my source of “extra” money for my hobbies of quilting and scrapbooking!

· What Inspires Me: Sometimes I am inspired by books and patterns and sometimes by things I see around me (like tile designs on floors and walls or a scene in nature). Most often, though, I am inspired by seeing what others have made either on blogs or at get-togethers with other quilters at guilds or our little neighbhorhood group, which I love. I would suspect most quilters are inspired in the same ways that I am.

· What I Love to Do the Most Creatively: My two favorite creative outlets are quilting and scrapbooking, although my scrapbooking has been sorely neglected in the past few years, and I need to get back to that soon!

· My Favorite Fabric and Designer: This is an impossible question for me as I don’t have any one favorite. It depends on the project AND if the quilt is intended for someone else, in which case I take their tastes into consideration. For instance, I am rather “conservative” in my decorating tastes, so I prefer something like the Thimbleberries fabrics for my own quilted items. If I am making something for my grandkids, I’d choose something in bright colors like a Mark Lapinski fabric or Kaffe Fassett or any of the many “BRIGHT” fabrics on the market!

· UFO I Intend to Finish First: Right now, I’m thinking I will finish the signature-block quilt that a group of 12 of us made during 2009. Hopefully, by the time this interview is on your blog, it will be DONE. (Of course, my UFO plans are often derailed, so it may still be a UFO at that time!!!)

· What’s on the Design Wall Now: I am currently working on 12 cottages I am making for a year-long swap in which I’ve been involved. My month to provide cottages is February, so as I write this interview, I am working on finishing them up so I can get them in the mail for the gals to have them in February.

· Who Would I Love to Meet: If we are talking well-known quilters, I think I’d like to meet Eleanor Burns as she seems down-to-earth and fun and I think we’d have many laughs as she tried to teach this quilter some new tricks. I would also like to meet some of the quilt designers whose blogs I visit….Pat Wys, Kim Walus, Gudrun, Kari Carr, Valori Wells, Judy Laquidara, to name a few. I have had the chance to meet Pat Sloan a couple of times and found her very nice and a lot of fun. Barbara Barber is a sweetheart from whom I took a class at a quilt show. And I can’t say enough kind things about Gyleen Fitzgerald, who is not only a great quilt designer but an all-around, genuinely kind person. HOWEVER….if we are talking about well-known people outside the quilt world, I would like to meet someone like Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, Diane Sawyer, or Tom Brokaw, who are well-known people in the news broadcasting field in the U.S.A. I believe it would be fascinating to hear of the many things they have seen and done during the course of their careers and I’d hope to pry out of them some “secrets” they’ve learned along the way. Walter Cronkite would have been the “ultimate” news person to meet as he saw so many changes in the world during his long career, but he is no longer with us, having passed away during 2009.

· If I Had One Wish: I would wish for the world the same thing I wish for my own family…..peace, health, and “enough” (that is: “enough” financial stability to live happily….not lots of excess that we don’t need, but “enough” to live comfortably and not have worries about everyday expenses). To me, if we all had those things, life would be a lot simpler and the world would be a better place. On a more frivolous note, I wish I’d win a big lottery prize so I could use some of it to charter an airplane and rent out an entire resort hotel so I could host a retreat for many of the nice bloggers I’d love to meet, including YOU, of course, Micki! (Of course, since I rarely play the lottery, the odds of this wish coming true are pretty slim, I am sad to say.)

· Plans for the Future: I would hope to improve my own physical health and get in better shape……to do some traveling to places in the U.S. I’ve not seen…maybe make a return-trip to Ireland (which I visited and loved in 1994)…..see my grandkids grow up and have happy lives and maybe get to see great-grandkids! Sprinkled amidst all that would be my plan to improve as a quilter and not to accumulate so many UFO’s….and to do that, I really need to learn to do free-motion quilting a lot better than I do it now!!!

Thanks Pat for a wonderful interview!