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The story of our Pie Plate Journey ...

The Pie Plate Patterns Company was started in 2006 by Tammy German and Brenda Bailey. It all happened quite accidentally. Brenda had been teaching a basic quilting class in the Community Education program and Tammy was one of her first students. Tammy started teaching with her and at the request of some of their students, they began a new class, teaching table runners and wall hangings for each month of the year.

This was a 2 year journey, as they had to design as they went, but it became a well-attended class and they continued teaching after the first year was over. They had many requests for the patterns they were teaching, so they decided to publish the patterns. All of the patterns had to be rewritten since our original patterns were pretty basic and didn't have consistent instructions. This took months, but we finally got them ready. We took our own pictures, designed our front pages with Brenda's daughter Bonnie's help, and published these patterns ourselves.

Coming up with a name for our business was difficult. When Tammy suggested Pie Plate Patterns, we knew that was it! When Tammy had moved into the community where Brenda lived, Brenda had taken her a pie plate filled with sweet rolls. Tammy returned it with a fresh peach pie, and so the pie plate went back and forth for about a year...then we started quilting and didn't have time anymore. We designed some baby quilts and published those next.  Then Tammy's life took a different direction as she went back to school to get her Master's degree. She sold her share of the company to Brenda's daughter, Bonnie in August of 2008.

Since Bonnie and Brenda have been partners, they have published their first book, Piece of Pie: Layer Cake Friendly Quilt Patterns, in October 2008. In May 2009, "the sequel" Piece of Pie a la Mode: More Layer Cake Friendly Quilts Patterns was made available.  They then decided to compile the monthly wall hangings and table runners into seasonal books with more projects for each month.  It was a year-long adventure, but they are finally done!  In between all of this, they have come out with several new individual patterns as well and started hosting two quilt retreats every year.  Every day is an adventure!