One of the things I love about quilting is the people you meet. Quilting cuts across gender, age, race, nationality, and even profession(past and present). Everyone has a story and most are willing to share it! Quilt Market is just another great opportunity to meet people with some amazing stories!
We didn’t meet Samantha Caffee until we were on our way back to the airport to go home. We got to sit with Samantha on the shuttle ride to the airport and as luck would have it – she was also on our flight to Chicago. So we had a nice long opportunity to get to know this amazing lady.
Samantha is the owner of The Handmade Dress. (www.TheHandmadeDress.com) She designs and sells patterns for the most adorable little girl dresses. The more we listened to Samantha’s story, the more we were amazed at how much this soft spoken young woman from Alabama was able to accomplish in any given day. (In fact it made us question whether or not we were using our daily 24 hours to the fullest!) Samantha has three kids, ranging from 4 to 8 years old, and is awaiting two more young ones that she is adopting from Bulgaria. In addition to taking care of the kids, a large garden, an assortment of chicken and goats and baking her own bread, Samantha also home-schools all three children and intends to do so for all five through high school. To here her tell it, it is all very achievable and very fulfilling. Her blog is full of stories and pictures of her happy family.
“Given all that you do in the home, when in the world do you have the chance to design and make your patterns?” we asked. Turns out that her office area and classroom space are adjacent and so after she gives her lessons and the kids sit down to complete their assignments, Samantha also sits down to do her work. “Besides”, she said “unlike a quilt, it only takes me a couple of hours to sew up a dress and the pattern instructions are pretty simple.” She says that she is lucky to have “live” models of varying ages and sizes which allows her to easily size her patterns.
Please be sure to check out her website and blog, especially if you have little girls in your life! As much as I love my boys, it makes me wish I had little girls!
Helle-May