Week and Quilter #14: Kerry Foster

So I'm a bit late at introducing myself! My day job has really taken it out of me this week so all my activity has been on Instagram of what little sewing I've felt like I could do! Don't worry I hear you get someone good taking over the account next week, so please stick with me... ;)

Who am I?
I'm Kerry, and I'm often called Penny, because my username for most things is @pennydog. I'm cool with being called either! I live in nearly the most central place in the UK that you can get, so I miss the sea as I grew up near the Yorkshire coast. I live here with my husband Alex, (newlywed still technically but we've been together 11 years so I think it's working out OK) and our two dogs. I love dogs. There's Gwen (#gwenstagram) who is a 10 year old greyhound from Wales and she is the spitting image of our first dog, Penny and is pretty much as interactive as her (read: not very). We also have the notorious #instahank- Hank the English Pointer, and he is coming up to 18 months old. It was a love/hate relationship for many months but I could just squish his stupid baggy face all day now.

I work full time in b2b marketing and as mentioned earlier it's a crazy busy time for me right now. I'm also a part time writer for a few quilting publications here and there. I'm also a member of East Midlands Modern Quilt Guild and I will be Instagramming from there on Saturday this week, you lucky people!

Why did I start quilting?
I've always made stuff. I cross stitched when I was about seven years old upwards and moved on to beadweaving at secondary school and resin jewellery making and a ton of stuff in between after that. I settled on quilting after I got disenamoured with jewellery making and chocolatiering. I used to have a business around both of those things but I had a moment of realisation that I didn't enjoy the things that were businesses and no longer just a hobby. So I decided to try quilting as I'd thought about it for a while but couldn't see any business potential in such a slow craft!

I used to edit a craft magazine back-in-the-day and a sister publication was Popular Patchwork, so it was the sample copies of that magazine that got me interested and I've not looked back. Except I've sort of made it a micro business.... Yep, that wasn't meant to happen but it's still a lovely slow process and I don't have to churn out more quilts than I actually want to, so it works.

My favourite quilt....
It changes all the time, and I have two designs I'm dying to work on that I know will take over so I will have to say for now that it is my Moose quilt, Hoots Mon, that hangs in the living room.

I think my musical Billy Bass quilt is pretty cool though too.

My style is...

I am not shy about my hatred of the quilt police, that is both traditional AND modern- because they exist in both camps most definitely! My style is creating what I want, how I want, using whatever fabrics and colours I like at the time and so if I feel like I need to put a name to it, I call it postmodern quilting. Usually I create in one of two styles. I have a commercial side where I design and make quilts that will appeal to publications and their readers. Sometimes I love them, sometimes I just like them. My most favourite style though is machine turned-edge pictorial quilts using solids, blenders, batiks, prints, whatever to get the job done. These turn out looking less classic than other pictorial quilts you may see in shows because of my crowbarring in of contemporary fabrics but they are definitely a representation of me! Hopefully I will be showing you the process a bit before my week is up as I have a Hank in progress...

Find me here!
Instagram: @pennydog
Twitter: @pennydog
Blog: http://blog.pennydog.com