Jaymi’s creativity has taken many forms over her life. She hand-sewed clothes for her Barbies and mixed bread and glue to make clay, she learned tatting, knitting, and crocheting—but when she saved up to buy her own sewing machine in junior high school, she paved a new path for her creativity.

Gradually, Jaymi worked her way up from sewing dresses out of neckties and candy foil wrappers to crafting custom wedding gowns and couture dresses. It was around that time that Jaymi decided something important about her creative endeavors:

She had found success, but somewhere along the way, she lost something else. Creating—at least, creating the way she had to create to maintain her success—just wasn’t fun anymore.

So, she gave it up.

Becoming the Foundation Paper Piecing (FPP) Queen

Today, Jaymi is primarily known for her Foundation Paper Piecing quilts. Though she can’t really explain the reason, quilting creates a joy in her that her former creative schedule snuffed out. In a social media quiltfest series, Jaymi explains her love of quilting: “…It’s been such a natural fit from the very beginning, that I don’t think about WHY I do it; I just do it. I do enjoy showing what I’ve made, teaching, traveling, and sharing my experience. But those are secondary reasons for why I quilt. I quilt because my brain wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Though it is secondary, helping others find the same innate joy and satisfaction she does from quilting is still important to Jaymi. She uses some combination of her blog and social media to teach her followers all of the tips and tricks she’s learned to successfully make a beautiful quilt using her “quick and dirty” FPP method. Whether through week-by-week tutorials, sew-alongs, or free bock patterns, she does everything she can to make quilting fun and accessible for everyone. You might recognize Jaymi from her incredible paper-pieced wall hanging depicting her view from a plane window—she hosted that unforgettable segment in our 2024 Spring Fling virtual quilting event.

And speaking of plane windows—Jaymi’s creative work has also allowed her to fold another one of her passions into her day-to-day job: travel. Jaymi often hosts classes at quilt shops around the country, from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, to Mission Viejo, California, to Fredricksburg, VA, Jaymi gets to take her love for quilting on the road and share her immense knowledge with quilters and sewists from all over.

Unpopular Quilting Opinions

Unpopular quilting opinions are a mainstay on Jaymi’s Instagram feed. Contrary to how it might sound, Jaymi usually uses this format to encourage her fellow quilters to embrace their creativity, no matter the techniques they use, no matter the tools they have, no matter what brings them joy.

“There is NO “right” way to quilt!” she says in one caption. “Each quilter’s style and technique are unique and should be celebrated! There. Is. No. Wrong. Way.” In another she expands on this idea saying “there is no such thing as cheating. This is quilting. We have fun, we enjoy the process, we love our finished quilts, no matter how we get there.”

Given her burnt-out, overburdened beginnings with creativity, its no wonder that Jaymi is so passionate about creating in the ways that bring you joy over worrying about the way you “should” create.

So, Home-Based Quilters, take a page out of Jaymi’s book, or, rather, a block from her quilt, and go quilt something that will make you happy—something that will feed your soul in the way that only quilting can.