The first time I met Susan-Claire was at Houston Festival 2016, where we both were vending. Susan-Claire was selling her patterns and was introducing the festival crowd to her amazing new block of the day quilt "That Town and Country". That Block of the Day would start in 2017: every day a new block, creating in the end a quilt that could look like your own hometown. It was the first time someone had a block of the day. Each block was only 4.5" square if I remember correctly and customers would get daily email instructions from the other end of the world.
You see, Susan-Claire is from New Zealand. She has lived in many countries, went to boarding school in England as her parents were in the Service. She has lived and worked in Darwin Australia and all this growing up in different places has given her a worldly view. She travels all over the world with ease, including the USA. She adapts, is totally not demanding, and is curious to her surroundings, outgoing. She is such a pleasure to be with. To me, Susan-Claire was quite unique at hello because of her demeanor and because there are not many vendors from New Zealand at Festival.
Susan-Claire was using the Hoffman 1895 batiks for her quilt and that brought her to my booth. I had every possible color, neatly labeled. There were fat quarters and yard cuts and customers loved to see the entire collection. "Can you make fabric packages for my "That town and country quilt" and mail them to people who want to have the kit?" Well, of course I could. And so a very successful cooperation started right at Festival. My team made many, many fabric packages and mailed them all over the world. Hundreds of kits so that people got one shipment for all the blocks. Susan-Claire sent out her daily blocks and when the year was over and all 365 blocks were published, she created a booklet of all the blocks. The party continued and more people started making the quilt. Hoffman noticed the amount of fabric the company was selling just because of Susan-Claire. Within a year her blue backgrounds had sold tremendously.
Up to this day, I don't know many other patterns, except for maybe Kim McLean's patterns, that have created so many winners at shows. Big national shows, little local ones.... so many quilters have won ribbons and prizes with this particular quilt. Susan-Claire has given the quilters with that one idea so much joy. I told her this, complimented and thanked her for making such a positive impact on so many.... she wasn't even really aware of this. The pattern is still available and if you want a playful pattern that you can really make personal and your own, go for it. It's a big Town, but because of its medallion design, you can make it smaller if you want to.
As an international teacher, she was one of the first ones making YouTube videos and I encourage you to look her up. Her personality shines through all of it: she has an absolute great sense of humor. She is practical and straightforward, which really makes her lessons so delightful, or maybe I should say "delicious". Susan-Claire loves to design and teach and she calls quilting "delicious". I think this "because quilting is delicious" is so telling about her style. She has no cat laying around to distract the viewers. She has no small talk to fill the video. If you want a lesson, you get a lesson. But always with an undertone of whimsy. She makes learning fun indeed.
