Hi! My name is Joy Candrian. I'm a wife, proud mother to four children and grandma to five adorable children. All of these sweet little ones live too far away to enjoy on a daily basis, so I'm constantly creating something to send to them so they'll grow-up knowing their grandma loves and adores them. How far away are they, you might wonder? Let's just say they are all in different places, all over the world, all thousands of miles away. Someday, when my husband retires, I'm hoping we'll be the grandparents who live down the street, but for now that's just a dream.
This blog, xoxo Grandma, is my latest creation where I'll be sharing with you items I've made by hand.
Here's a little information about me and how I started creating:
My mother always had a room full of fabric, a huge metal tin filled with old buttons and almost any sewing supply needed for creating projects. My sisters and I were allowed to dig into my mother's stash. She taught us to hand sew doll clothes, embroider pillowcases and create, create, create. One of my earliest memories was "getting" to thread the needles for my Mother and Grandma Mills when they were quilting in the middle of our living room. "Our eyes were better," we were told and so we got to help by keeping a good supply of threaded needles ready for them. And then my little brothers and I were allowed to play under their huge quilting frames. What fun we had! I received my first Singer sewing machine for Christmas from Santa when I was 7 years old. (Yes, that's me pictured above with my Singer.) When Barbie dolls were all my sister and I wanted to play with, we were encouraged to make our own Barbie house out of cardboard boxes and our furniture was created out of empty salt containers and empty wooded spools.
When I was about 8 years old, my older brother Leo was drafted into the Army and was sent to Vietnam. He knew I liked to draw and color and while he was on R & R in Japan, he sent me a huge watercolor set for my birthday. I loved it! I'd spend hours painting. When I was in 7th grade, I got my first oil painting kit as a Christmas gift and I was in heaven learning that technique.
Fast forward quite a few years and when I finally became a grandmother I created "one of a kind" baby quilts for each of my little ones. I hadn't done a lot of sewing since my children stopped wearing Halloween costumes (which I lovingly sewed each year for them). While creating these quilts, I realized how much I loved sewing. By this time in my life, I'd gone through the scrapbooking era and had painted enough oil paintings to hang in every appropriate spot in my home and needed a new place to exert my creative energy.
I've got a bachelor or arts degree in Interior Design from Brigham Young University. I like to tell people I had an emphasis in art because I started out as an art major and I took a lot of art classes.
I hope you enjoy this little space on the internet, where I can share with you all my creations, big and small. I'd love to hear what you think!
If you're interested, here are the links to those first five baby quilts:
Grandchild #5 Quilt (Grandchild #5 quilt is not an original design but I helped my daughter start this quilt years ago and this is the one she wanted for her first baby. It literally took her years until she brought it to me to ask if I would have it done in time for grandchild #5? I love how it turned out.)
Education: BA in Interior Design, Brigham Young University
Owner of one of the first Scrapbook stores in the nation, sold 1999
Sales Representative
Administrative Assistant
xoxo Grandma
