Danielle Alba
The beauty (and a very good part of the brains.. hehe) behind The Quilt Idaho and the creative force behind The Quilt Lab Idaho, Danielle began quilting when she found a pile of vintage and antique quilt tops in her husband’s grandmother’s estate. With a soft spot for those affected by dementia, she decided to learn to quilt using YouTube and a $300 Singer to try to finish 6 quilts in 6 weeks for his grandma to have the satisfaction of seeing the quilts finished and be able to give them out as Christmas gifts to her children and grandchildren.
It about killed her, but it got done.
Danielle comes from the worlds of academia and STEM, completing her graduate degree in Animal Biology before becoming an Instructor at a local community college. Learning the seemingly never-ending skills of quilting, making close friends in the quilting community, and taking up a leadership role by founding the Nampa Modern Quilt Guild with the help of some very supportive friends has brought great satisfaction (and challenge) into her life that she didn’t know she needed. Now she and her very supportive husband are working to make quilting and hosting a quilters’ retreat into her new career. (Pray for us!).
Blake Baxter
All of this started in earnest when Blake asked Danielle to make him a quilt. He had no idea what that meant or how much it would end up costing years later as he is shopping for land to build his wife a quilting dreamland in the mountains of Idaho.
Blake is the fixer of the two, always finding ways to carry out the whims of his wife with the best attitude she could hope for. He’s learning the quilting world through diffusion via his obsessed wife, but really puts his skills to use by carrying out the tasks required to make his wife’s dream a reality, while maybe accomplishing some of his own. His background is in the tech professions so learning the ways of the massive, automated long-arm machine doesn’t sound like too terrible a fate.
… he is still waiting for his quilt to be finished.
Our family: Blake, Violet, Danielle, Annabel, and Elton. Photo courtesy of QuiltFolk Magazine.