Lisa Calle and Karen Thompson

Home

In the Spotlight

Designers

In the Spotlight

Written by Suzanne Earley

Lisa Calle and Karen Thompson

For our first designer spotlight, I've asked a pair of designers to answer some questions and let us get to know more about them.

Lisa Calle and Karen Thompson are the partners behind Intelligent Quilting, a brand-new pattern company offering digital and paper patterns from a number of talented designers.

Karen and Lisa have take the time out of their busy lives to answer some questions and provide us with some beautiful quilting to look at.

(Click the Read More link to read the article!)

If you would like to leave a comment or ask a question you can head on over to the forum (you do have to have a forum account. A post can be found here for discussion about this article.

MQResource: Tell us about your families.

Lisa Calle: Married 13 years, 2 boys 10 and 8 with another boy on the way. Due May 9th.

Karen Thompson: Married 26 years , 1 daughter:21, two boys: 18 and 16 Hopefully none on the way.

MQR: Where do you call home? Maple

LC&KT: We both live in the suburbs of Philadelphia about an hour away from each other.

MQR: How long have you been quilting?

Lisa: 11 years Longarming: 4 years

Karen: 14 years Longarming: 6 years

MQR: Do you still do much piecing, or are you all about the quilting?

Lisa: Piecing?? What's that? Right now just don't have the time.

Karen: Piecing..Never mind

MQR: How did you get into designing?

Lisa: Just like everything else....I fell into it.

Karen: Lisa browbeat me into it.

MQR: How did the two of you decide to work together to create Intelligent Quilting?

Since meeting in 2005 at the Phil. Airport on the way to MQX, we spoke almost daily. The husbands were a little concerned about the phone bills and thought that we should make our conversations more profitable. Karen came up with this "brilliant" idea in July about having a little Internet digital design business. Should be easy, right? Her son was going to dothe website and we were only going to do digital patterns in IQ format. If you know anything about the two of us you would know that we don't do anything half ass. It is an all or nothing proposition. So after careful deliberation or a couple of glasses of wine...which ever came first..we decided that our life was not complicated enough so we thought HMMMM let's do it ALL!

All digital formats, wide format printer, many designers, paper patterns and software, along with an official website.

MQR: What is the most challenging part of quilting for you?

Lisa: Right now: My huge ass belly. Just kidding... time management

Karen: Staying on task..(that is what Lisa is for)

MQR: What are your latest quilting designs?

Lisa: I was looking for something extremely simple for a specific quilt and came up with Simply

Karen: Splendor along with all the blocks, really a beautiful pattern

MQR: What are your favorite quilting tools?

Lisa: Internet, the IQ, and my straight edge ruler

Whirlwind MQR: What hobbies do you have (beyond quilting)?

Lisa: Golf, gardening, reading, Tae Kwon Do (of course I have taken a little break from this)

Karen: Beading, reading, running

MQR: Anything else to tell us about quilting or your business?

Intelligent Quilting has turned out to be much more work than anticipated.

But we are both enjoying every minute of it. We balance each other well, normally, but the last 7 months Lisa has been a tad bit hormonal and Karen is threatening menopause.

MQR: What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?

Lisa: Ben and Jerry's Coffee heath Bar Crunch

Karen: Anything from Cold Stone Creamery

MQR: Do you prefer salty or sweet snacks?

Lisa: All of the above

Karen: more of all of the above

MQR: What is your favorite beverage?

Lisa: I don't have one

Karen: A nice expensive glass of chardonnay

MQR: What are your favorite books/authors?

Lisa: Jodi Picoult, Janet Evonovich

Karen: Eat, Pray, Love : any self help book so she can advise Lisa

MQR: What are your favorite movies?

Lisa: Gone with the Wind

Karen: Cabaret

MQR: What is one weird or surprising thing about you (i.e. a strange habit, an odd job that you've held, etc...)?

Lisa: Bartender, flight attendant

Karen: snores like a freight train....don't room with her at MQX. Whoopsy Daisy

MQR: What is one of your goals for 2008?

Lisa: To survive childbirth...

Karen: to survive Lisa's childbirth

Oh did you mean business....

Lisa and Karen: to continue to grow our business and be a one stop pattern store.

Contacting Lisa and Karen:

http://www.intelligentquilting.com

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

http://community.webshots.com/user/intelligentquilting

I haven't been able to stop giggling since reading their answers, and I hope all of you have enjoyed getting to know Lisa and Karen a little bit better, too.

Don't forget, you can a post in the forum here where you can comment or ask questions.

Thanks, Lisa and Karen! Good luck to both of you in your future ventures!

Featured Quilt

Mermaid Quilt

Nancy Hughson

Quilt Blog Ads

Click Here for More Information about Quilt Blog Ads

Recent How-To Article

The "P" word

Our world is full of people wanting shortcuts. We want to have everything and we don't want to wait -- we want what we want and we want it right now. The situation with the US financial system is certainly indicative of that...but I'm not here to talk about such an unpleasant topic!!

As quilters we are no different -- we want to produce beautiful quilting and we want to do it yesterday. Now, I'll grant you that there are some prodigies in the machine quilting world, but those prodigies are pretty few and far between. The rest of us have to work at our craft, and what may look effortless is actually the result of many long years of hard work.

Practice might be spelled with 8 letters, but I'm sure many people consider it a "4-letter" word -- one that you'd rather not hear in your house and try to use as little as possible. I'm here to tell you, though, that this particular "P" word and several of its friends are not as horrible as you might think, and I'd like to give you some tips and ideas about how to effectively practice.