Homespun E26 | Jemima Flendt

hi everyone welcome to Homespun where creativity and Community come together I am your host Misty Don and I'm so excited to be joined by jamaa Flint of Tide with a ribbon she's going to share her journey from being a home economics teacher to a quilt pattern designer and you're going to love getting to know her jamaa thank you so much for being with me today would you mind introducing yourself and telling everyone a little bit about you sure well thank you so much for having me I'm so excited to actually be here it's been a long time in the making so have beened a while now a couple years a long time that's right so well my name is jamaa flint and I'm a quilt patent designer teacher and author and I'm based in Perth Australia so yeah little little Fairway away exactly and that explains why it took a bit of time to get you over here that's right but um you came into town for quiltcon and that's right it's been yeah so exciting to be able to um do some previously and then come to spend the week with you here I know I'm I'm so thrilled it worked out so let's talk a little bit about your background and how you got started with quilting well I was actually a high school home economics teacher oh my gosh how awesome so I was in the classroom for many years and teaching has always been at the at the really root of what I I do and I'm so passionate about getting people started um in quilting and and teaching has really just been that way that I've been able to through my business um grow and um connect with Quilters all through through the world I love that I love that you were a home act teacher because I had a fabulous home act teacher growing up I remember her name Mrs Eubank and she was wonderful and it makes me sad that that's kind of Fallen by the way site is it the same in Australia or is it still it has done yeah unfortunately a lot of the textiles has been sort of um made way for um for commercial cookery and and that with our with our students and being able to offer that for for them so wonderful I mean I mean it's obviously time times change and we have to Pivot and adapt but I love that you've been able to repurpose you know what you taught in the classroom and to then you kind of bring it into what you do now yeah um I really sort of love how it the skills that you know in the classroom that I've been able to use really are just the same in terms of teaching people how to quilt and getting them started on their own Adventures so that they can really um learn and grow and love and have success with quilting because that's how we get more people in our community absolutely so what first brought you to sewing is it something you've always done your whole life yeah um I come from a very crafty family and my nan taught me how to crochet when I was about seven years old and she would always start me off on in the middle cuz I could never do that and um I would use all the yarn and all the scraps that I could to continue to make the the crochet blankets and when they got big enough she would start me off all over again and oh so sweet yeah and my mom she we grew up with her making our clothes and um really getting into quilting came about because my baby sister at the time was getting a room make over and there were all these scraps left over okay so I picked them up I took what mom had in her sewing room and I found a magazine which was the Better Homes and Gardens and a quilt pattern in the back and I set about with my scissors and with what I knew on the machine just making my first quilt how fun how old were you then I was 16 how cool is that and um only a few years ago mom came over and she actually handed me that quilt because I didn't know she actually still had it oh that's amazing you're going to have to send us a picture so we can show that because how amazing so yeah just that whole you know and and whilst it's absolutely you know not perfect by any means but it's just so important in that journey of quilting and um things you know have changed I didn't know how to bind a quilt I didn't know that there were rotary cutters and all those sorts of things absolutely one and Jenny my mother-in-law often talks about how you know those first quilts we should honor them because it's part of our journey and part of what's got us from there to hear and how special that you still have it and can look back on that no I think very much in terms of working a lot with beginner Quilters that first quilt is really important and I think sometimes we get you know often embarrassed or we're sort of a little shy with our skills at that point but really being able to sort of look back on that as well in your journey of quilting is um really special and should be celebrated I think so too and maybe you can speak to this since you've taught in the classroom as well but I think one of the things that as adults we forget is that the process of learning a new thing it means that there's going to be mistakes and failures and I think we get this expectation of perfection that's just really not possible that's right um so do you want to speak to that a little bit yeah um very much in my classes we talk and I sort of set everyone up with that premise that you just need to give yourself some Grace when you're here to learn and when you're starting out it's not going to be perfect and I'm very much um in the classroom trying to sort of put on to on to the students and anyone who's coming along that it takes all those steps to get to um you know a product that you love and and enjoy and you don't have to sit there unpicking every little Stitch and and enjoy that process whilst you're going through it because it's really um that learning process will push you on to your next one and um seeing that success and actually having that finished product wants you and pushes you to want to go out and get another project and start on your next one and and especially then gifting it or giving it to someone and having that experience where um you can see that appreciated or loved or used well and and I think the other flip side of that too is typically when you give a gift that you've put so much work into they don't see all the imperfections that you see they just see this wonderful they love it regardless exactly and so then I think it's a great reminder to us that oh we do need to be nicer to our we need to just enjoy this process because it should be fun right yeah absolutely um you know no one's actually looking harder at those quilts than you are yourself so you definitely don't need to to worry because everyone um everyone's Mill is different you know everyone starts at different places and um yeah one of the things that I loved after quiltcon I saw someone share online this thought that um she will always consider herself an intermediate quilter because if she decides she's an advanced quilter then she's done learning right I love that I loved that thought too and it's such a good reminder that we should all be eager to learn and looking for those opportunities to learn more yeah well in a recent classroom um I was teaching a a beginners Foundation paper piecing class and I had asked the students before you know who has done any of it or who has um done some before and I was very surprised to have quite a number of those people who were there um had already done it and they were quite Advanced but they came and what they were telling me was that were there to learn something that they didn't know they were there to learn tips they wanted to know things that they didn't know yet about the actual techniqu so it I just was so surprised in that willingness to come and learn and and people are so eager to actually learn you know what isn't necessarily written in the pages of of patterns and Designs but pick up all those little tips and tricks that you actually get that you would have to write a whole you know encyclopedia for to include them in a pattern so it's so great true because sometimes just the act of doing things you know in rote and on repeat we we pick up these little habits and tips that we don't even necessarily know how to articulate until you're teaching or there in a in a space with people and so being able to share those is so great that's it yeah absolutely one of the I love talking also to to the students and and participants is that there are really a lot of ways to get to that end journey in quilting it doesn't matter if everyone's doing that 10 different ways it's about finding what you like in quilting and finding the way that forward that you love to do it so it doesn't matter if I show you this particular way if you find it easier or you've done something previously before that gives you that knowledge then absolutely we all end up in that same place and it doesn't matter which road we take to get there I absolutely love that thought and it's so true because we often hear like no quilt police here but that's a stronger way to say that you know the whole point is that we should be enjoying the process yeah and there's no right or wrong way from A to B person to person mhm we all hold our pencil differently but we all can write beautiful things and just the same way you know in our quilting we all can do it differently but we all get there together at the same exactly and we can still once once the Project's finished we very rarely say how did you make your half Square triangles for that like we don't really care you know we just want to enjoy the beauty of of the finished project quite often we people are asking because they want to learn other ways to do something exactly exactly that's true if you're in a classroom setting I was just thinking more of like when you're admiring the finished work you don't really care how they did it you just want to enjoy it yeah it's so true so let's talk a little bit about how you made the shift from a classroom teacher to sharing online yeah I had actually been doing my classroom teaching sort of role had sort of gone down a little bit with my home and my family life and I was teaching some classes through um in a local store and what had happened was I really had to come to that point where I had to make that decision do I go back into teaching fulltime or do I actually give my business and Tide with a ribbon a real go and it was a hard leap to make because it sort of took away that whole um safety Ned of you know a full-time job and all that for my family um but it was just something that I was so passionate about in quilting and I loved the aspect of teaching so much within it that I knew that I could always go back to teaching if I wanted to but I just never saw that teaching quilting was going to end up for me being you know and having me teach you know around the world and having me do those sorts of things so yeah it was definitely a leap of faith at the time um but it's all you know it's it's been hard work oh Absol you know to get here and um certainly times where you just sort of wish you were back in the classroom because um you know those sorts of things are are easier sometimes to sort of switch off at the end of the day um but no I've absolutely you know just loved my journey through quilting and and the people um that I get to work with and the students that I meet um I wouldn't change that for the world absolutely so what was the first thing that you kind of did that like was your first step into your business so I really started out with patent writing and I think that that was that natural progression from teaching um in that I saw the pages of um patent instructions really as a way to teach people how to make that and that's always why I've Loved writing very much essentially beginner focused patterns so that you understand those simple things because um quite often you can pick up a pattern and not necessarily know things when you're starting out in quilting um so I really try to include a lot of that little detail in my patterns and the things that'll help you um maybe that sometimes it just assumed that you know how to do um so I started out with writing patterns and teaching them and then um the first book like I worked very hard on um I wanted to write a book and um have that manuscript pic picked up and then it sort of things continued to sort of snowball from there so awes by the time I'd written my first book and it was out I was already writing my second book and definitely in terms of how I've connected mostly with people is through social media so a lot of people as well I was connecting through um through Instagram and through you know all the social media channels and that's really how I've continued to to grow um my teaching that way as well yeah it's pretty amazing and one of the things I love about you know the internet and social media in general is that it opens up this audience that you wouldn't have access to otherwise absolutely before we sat down to talk about this you mentioned that you know about half of your audience is here in the states which is incredible yeah it's been sort of so interesting to sort of see that Journey um being Australian and um also sharing my love for quilting you know through through Australia and New Zealand and being able to do that but also then to share it with my audience here sure um because the amount of faces and that for for people you know cookon and that that come up and say hello and you've never met them but you've been chatting to them online and you know it's so great to finally meet those people it's just you know and people will come up to you they and you don't necessarily know them but they've followed you and the and your journey and um they they they're so open to showing you what they've made from from your work so that connection is just yeah it's it's Indescribable really it's really special it really is a beautiful thing to be able to connect with people from all across the world through this shared love and hobby that we have in quilting um yeah I don't it feels very unique and special to what we do it does it's nothing that I've ever taken for granted and it's just yeah really like amazing to you know be sitting here even and um you but it's it's true it's it's hard work to you know keep up doing it and I think a lot of people sometimes you know other things call them and but my Pursuit really to to continue to to reach beginner Quilters and to share that love that I have for quilting has just really driven me forward in in being able to continue to want to share I love that well speaking of share you brought some of your projects with you so can we look through some of those I love that all right um start with this one at the bottom all right so this here is one of my earlier um patterns and this is called Aurora and this is half Square triangles and this was yeah out of the beautiful Allison glass collection that um released um several years ago um but really this is um such a fabulous um way for people to start out in in quilting um because you really become quite proficient in your half Square triangles um and then you've got the beautiful color how it sort of ombre out but um with the repeated quadrant pattern uh it really means that you're not necessarily actually putting lots of blocks together and you're able to practice and really hone in those skills as well so that's beautiful I love that those little threads yeah it's traveled a long way oh it's gorgeous and this cling pattern is beautiful as well so this kind of um also then just started what through like through Co there was kind of this whole well suddenly things had really changed for us where we were were living and things in stores had changed as well and always having crochet during during the pandemic it was really um I decided that I wanted to pick up my crochet again and having this quilt sort of out I realized the the diff like how similar the this was to the crochet designs that I had been um loving so as just an actual experiment what I did was I took this particular quilt pattern and then I actually turned it into what has become known as my Merryweather blanket gosh which is the exact you know the sister the crochet version to to this quilt so how fun is that and it was just you know I absolutely love handwork I love crochet I love hand quilting um but this was just an experiment that people saw me doing on Instagram because I was sharing it um because especially through that time like making those connections was really so much more valuable than I think we'd ever realized before exactly and then people were asking me like was I going to release it as a pattern and was I going to you know do something with it and at that time I hadn't actually ever released an actual crochet pattern okay so that kind of started a whole another side to my business uh with crochet and this kind of was the first um and it's gone on to what became then my third book I was yeah called um quilt it crochet it and all of those um pattern are actually there's a quilt and then there's a blanket or a crochet project that is the exact um replica so I've brought some of those as well yeah so we've got here um this is the Rebecca quilt and in this particular book I actually chose to honor the um very important women who have had an impact on my um not just my career but in terms of those women who had really spurred me on in continuing to to pursue my quilting yes um so this is the Rebecca blanket um within the book I've got um projects named after my mom and my nana um and some of the very most important women um in my life who have had special roles in that um so it was really um yeah that was a really beautiful thing that I wanted all of them so this again is a um a half Square triangles project um and this is actually on the cover um of of the book and then this is the actual um crochet blanket version my go that way they're so beautiful so each of the projects were replicated in exactly the same way um even with the coloring and one of the most beautiful things that actually came out of this third book was so many people have come up to me afterwards and said that they quilt but their sister or their mom or their aunt or someone else in their family crochets and many of them have been working on the same project and then have swwa medium yeah and then been able to swap and been able to share their stories for that so that was something I never saw coming and that connection people would have with it um but yeah so so that's the Rebecca blanket I have often said that crochet so far has been the Nemesis of my craft journey I have I have yet to master it um we all have one mine's mine's knitting yes I have I can I can knit but I struggle with crochet but I love everything that is made with crochet so someday yeah I am in I am going to make it happen but these are so beautiful absolutely gorgeous so and then we have one more quote behind us and I know that you'll be teaching this as well I'm so excited to um to do that and this one's called endgame endgame yes so at the time I was listening to a lot of Taylor Swift yeah um not the movie um and it also um featured on um the cover of a magazine when it was released and it really um has been that quilt that sort of it got reposted and kind of was one of the first ones of mine that really sort of took on that new sort of level for me um and people it's one of the ones that I love to teach because it really just gets people into equilateral triangles and shows them that they're really you just have a few tips and tricks that you've once you've leared those um makes it so much easier to to work with but yeah endgame is absolutely one of my favorite quilts I love that well I I truly thank you so much for making the time to sit and talk to us and so before we sign off I would love if you would just maybe leave some encouragement for someone who is considering making the leap into a quilting business or a crafting business yeah well definitely and um for me what I would say is absolutely keep working hard at it because it isn't easy but with encouragement from all those people just trust what you're hearing rather than what you're sometimes thinking um and just absolutely if it's your passion we want you in our industry we want know we want new people to share what they love to do with quilting so so keep going I love that I love that so much it's so true we are better when there's more of us who are excited about the work that we're doing so if you don't mind will you remind everyone where they can follow along and keep up with what you're doing um well you can find my website over at um tiwi ribbon. comom um over on Instagram I'm also at TI with the ribbon and I absolutely love to connect with people over at Instagram and all the other fun social um channels you'll find me on as well wonderful thank you so much thank you [Music]