Sue and Sandy have nearly 50 years of quilting experience between them. Sue began quilting in the mid-1980s after everyone in her family and all of her friends decided they didn’t have another inch of space for anything cross-stitched. Sandy started in the early 1990s because she was so jealous of a quilt that a friend had made that she learned how to make one of her own. They have been working together on quilt designs for five years. They each also have their own quilting business.

Sandy is a longarm machine quilter. She bought her first machine in 1996 to finish her own quilts. She set it up in her bedroom, the only room big enough for the 12-foot table, and soon had quilters parading through the room picking up and dropping off their many quilt tops. She finally moved her machine and business from her bedroom to what was supposed to have been her husband’s new garage. She jokes that there was never a vehicle in the building—the garage doors came out, walls went up and Sandy’s Hideaway Quilts opened.

Sue began working for a national quilting magazine in 1995 as a technical reader and quilt designer. She assisted with development of a new quilting magazine and worked as one of its editors for many years. She continues to work as a freelance editor and technical proofreader for several publications, fabric companies and independent designers. She has been busy designing and making quilts for publication during all of those years. She is the author of two books and coauthor of five others.

Sue and Sandy met because of Sandy's longarm business. In 2005, they began collaborating on quilt designs, a fabric shop and kitting business. They formed Pine Tree Country Quilts, named because they each live in a grove of pine trees in the middle of Maine. They regularly design and make quilts for magazines and fabric companies and put together fabric kits for their designs. They sell their kits and patterns to quilters and shops around the world by phone and from their Web site. In 2010, their first book was published and a series of 12 books soon followed. They try to stay busy!