We're often asked, "How did you come up with the idea for this business?" Pam had been involved for about 25 years with the Travel Club at TRW and had escorted tours domestically and internationally. She had also joined the local quilters guild and jumped right in as Travel Chairman. In addition to the usual one-day bus trips, she put together a weekend trip to Fresno to see a quilt show and several museum exhibits of quilts. To help fill the trip, she advertised with some of the local guilds. A group of six ladies from Orange County (the Gourmet Quilters) joined the South Bay Quilters Guild for the trip to Fresno. We look back on that as the precursor to the Traveling Quilters.

Pam and Lynn worked together at TRW. Most days we were busy at work but there were those occasional times when things were slow and we'd sit around our offices day dreaming. One day the topic was, "What do you want to do when you retire?" Interesting question since both of us were far from retirement age at the time! The answer for both of us was to combine our favorite things-traveling and quilting. And that started the wheels turning. Why not go visit all those quilt shows that we want to and take a bus full of quilters with us! Lynn called that night and said, "Here's what we're going to do. We're going to offer a tour service for quilters and we'll call it the Traveling Quilters." Several days of plotting and planning in our spare time at work and we were off to downtown LA to file our DBA application. Then we headed up to Big Bear for a day of scouting locations and caterers. Our plan was to duplicate the successful Big Bear weekend retreats offered by Barely Stitchin' (then in Big Bear). The locations we found were positively dreadful (you can't imagine how bad they were), but we did find a wonderful caterer and she put us onto the houses on Lagunita Point that we still rent today.

Our first trips are something we look back on and laugh about now. For our first Big Bear weekend we rented one house and had eight paying customers. That weekend we invited Arlene Stamper to join us and teach a weekend workshop on Values. The workshop was great, the catered food was great (and we liked not having to cook), and a good time was had by all. As we drove home after a busy weekend, we pondered how we had done. The weekend was definitely a success, but there was one small glitch. As Pam calculated the costs in her head, it became clear that Pam and Lynn had each paid for their weekends and had paid substantially more than our customers. We needed to work on our pricing.

One of our early memorable day trips involved our "Gourmet Quilters" and friends. We had hired a motorcoach but didn't have enough paying passengers to cover the cost. We had planned a day at LACMA, a stop at Crazy Ladies & Friends, and then lunch in Santa Monica. We really wanted this to go so we rented a 15-passenger van for the day. Imagine the looks on their faces when we pulled up in the van instead of a motorcoach. They reluctantly piled in and off we went. Driving the van was an adventure in itself. Both of us had small compact cars and that van was BIG! The good news is we got them there and back safely and everyone had a great time. Some tell us that's one of their most memorable trips with us! We're happy to report that most of the Gourmet Quilters are still traveling with us and have become good friends.

Lynn and Pam ran the business for four years in our spare time and on a shoestring budget. In 1994 Lynn and Dale planned to move to Wrightwood. Sue stepped in and asked if she could join the partnership and we've continued to grow and expand the business over the last 16 years. Somewhere along the way Ruth Jones, Lynn's step-mother, joined us as our coordinator for the San Diego departure trips. She's built up quite a clientele for us from the San Diego area.

Where have our travels taken us over the years? Paducah (numerous times . . . ask us about our scouting trip and the bubbas next door), Houston (several times), Vermont Quilt Festival and New England, Baltimore/Washington, D.C./Philadelphia (yes that memorable trip in September 2001), Hawaii, Seattle for the APNQ show, Denver, Washington, D.C. and Williamsburg, weekend trips to Monterey, Petaluma, San Francisco (on the train with Amtrak on strike—another adventure), and of course, day trips to Santa Barbara, San Diego, and quilts shows all over Southern California.

The trips are fun and memorable but it's the friendships that we've made over the years that give us lasting memories. We've watched many, many people meet for the first time on our trips and become lasting friends. And we have met many wonderful quilters (and some non-quilters) over the years that have become good friends. We hope you'll join us soon!

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More About the Partners

Lynn Crawford
Lynn earned a Bachelor of Arts in Industrial Education from Cal State Long Beach, but quickly realized teaching high school students was not a self-fulfilling career and found work in the aerospace field. She went to work for Northrop Aircraft where she met her husband, Dale in 1981 and they were married in 1982.

Lynn's stepmother, Ruth Jones (our San Diego coordinator) introduced Lynn to quilting shortly after she was married. With no sewing background other than dressmaking in high school and college, she started with a sampler class, all done by hand. From there she moved quickly to the sewing machine and in 1987 she taught her first quilting class - finally, she was able to put her teaching education to use.

Lynn had left Northrop in 1984 and went to work in the proposal group at TRW, where she met Pam Overton. Pam took one of Lynn's sampler classes and was also hooked. They were both members of the South Bay Quilters Guild in Torrance, where they met Sue Glass. Lynn has always loved to travel and she and Pam formed the Traveling Quilters in 1990. Sue joined them in 1994, when Lynn and Dale moved to Wrightwood as Dale had been transferred to Palmdale on the B-2 bomber program.

Lynn quit her job at TRW and started taking travel agent courses. She got a job at the local travel agency where she stayed for 10 years. During that time, she continued her teaching of quilting classes to local guild members and quilt guilds. She recently left the agency and now works as a consultant on proposals for Northrop and other companies.

Lynn and Dale are avid horse people - with two horses kept at a local ranch, she finds that she does not have as much time for quilting as she used to. But she still finds time to travel both with the Traveling Quilters and with her husband. Her favorite part of the business is the interaction with all the other quilters that love to travel and find new shows and shops all over the country.

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Pam Overton
Pam was born in Santa Ana, CA…yes, a native Californian! Her family moved to Hermosa Beach in the early 50s and the sand and surf have been a part of her life ever since. She can't imagine living anywhere else! It seems like she's been sewing for as long as she can remember…certainly since Home Ec in Middle School and High School. Her mother made lots of doll cloths and dresses for them when her sisters and she were little. Funny thing, though, once Pam learned to sew, all her mother's mending, hems, etc. came to her! In high school her friends and her all sewed many of their own clothes. They thought nothing of hitting the Cotton Shop on Thursday or Friday afternoon and whipping up a pair of pants (who needs a waistband? that takes too much time) and top for Saturday night! Of course, Miss Risnell and Miss Koch, her Home Ec teachers, wouldn't have approved! The pants usually survived a couple of washings and then were quickly forgotten. Somewhere along the way, though, she got bored with making clothes and put her sewing machine away.

In 1986 she changed jobs at TRW and transferred in to Proposal Operations where she met Lynn. Lynn's stepmother Ruth had gotten her hooked on quilting and it wasn't long before Lynn had Pam hooked. It all started with a family quilt that needed repair. It was a grandmother's flower garden pattern with fabric from the 30's, made by her paternal grandmother as a wedding gift for her parents. You guessed it! It still needs repair! Over the years, she's run across many quilters who used to make their own clothes, but gave up sewing only to pick it up again when they began making quilts. Every time she sews with plaids now she has to chuckle a little. Miss Risnell would never approve of the whimsical, off-kilter way we use plaids today. But she certainly would appreciate a perfectly pieced quilt top with points and seams lined up!

Pam still lives in Manhattan Beach and works nearby—a 10 to 15 minute commute is all she can handle. After nearly 40 years with TRW, now Northrop Grumman, she still enjoys her job as a publications manager and technical editor. As Lynn and Pam both got more involved in quilting and later formed the Traveling Quilters, they also cleverly made sure that their boss became a quilter too. After all, they wanted her to be on their side if they wanted a day or afternoon off to attend a quilt show! As a tour coordinator for the TRW Travel club Pam traveled all over the world and escorted many, many groups to Europe, Mexico, the Orient and even a few domestic destinations like Las Vegas and San Francisco. It was that experience in the TRW Travel Club that helped fuel the idea for the Traveling Quilters. As Lynn and Pam hatched the idea they both agreed they wanted to combine their favorite pastimes—quilting and travel. Happily they've accomplished just that. And, as the Traveling Quilters visit quilt shows around the country, Pam is accomplishing one of her lifetime goals —visiting all 50 states.

No husband, kids, or pets for Pam, but she does have a niece, nephew, and a grand niece and two grand nephews that she showers attention, gifts and quilts on frequently! She's also lucky to count among her friends people that she's known since grade school and high school. Several of them go back to the third grade and Girl Scouts! She also dotes on the kids and grandkids of her friends. She's adopted them all as her own! That means she has a limitless number of quilts to make. While Star Wars, Spider Man and Dora the Explorer fabric aren't really her favorites, it's hard to say no when one of the kids makes a request. Ultimately, for her, that's what it's all about. Sewing and making quilts for the loved ones in her life gives her great pleasure. And now she's starting a new sewing chapter. It's back to clothing as the little girls in her life have fallen in love with American Girl dolls and simply must have matching outfits for themselves and their dolls!

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Sue settled in Redondo Beach, California in 1983, working at Los Angeles AFB. She saw a notice about the South Bay Quilters Guild in the local paper in about 1984, and began attending meetings where she met her friends Lynn and Pam. All of them still belong to a small quilting group called "The Ladies of the Evening" who meet, naturally, in the evening. Sue is still active in SBQG. Her job has taken her to many different cities and parts of the world, where her favorite pastime is to visit the local quilt shops just because she knows there will be something new and different with her name on it to take home.

Sue's favorite part of quilting is piecing, and she prefers vintage and primitive colors such as those found in the Kansas Troubles line of fabric. She also likes to make baby quilts (good thing because there is always a baby needing a quilt, right?), and prefers to machine quilt them so they can be laundered. She does some hand quilting, but not as much as previously, although since she recently retired from civil service after 30 years, she has a little more time to devote to it. That is, when she isn't traveling to see her grandchildren in Alaska and Colorado.

Sue has been a partner in The Traveling Quilters since 1994, and is the company CFO.

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Ruth Jones, San Diego Coordinator
Ruth Jones lives in San Diego with Lynn's father. They married in 1972. She graduated from The Ohio State University with a major in Physical Therapy and a minor in Psychology. She moved to California after graduation in 1966 and worked as a physical therapist for 30 years. She has been a horse lover since she was a child and still rides weekly although she no longer owns her own horse. She also enjoys sailing, canoeing, skiing and Jazzercise as well as quilting. She would get a lot more quilting done if the weather were worse and she had to stay indoors.

Ruth is a member of Friendship Quilt Guild in Poway as well as Canyon Guild in San Diego. Her first bus trip as a co-ordinator was with Friendship Guild when she took a bus to the Esprit Collection of Amish Quilts at the Laguna Beach Art Museum in 1995. The same year she took a bus to The National Quilting Association Annual Quilt Show in Riverside. The first trip for the Traveling Quilters from San Diego was in 1998. Since then she has run two annual trips for them—one to Road to California and the other to the Glendale Quilt Show.

As far as quilting goes Ruth enjoys piecing and likes scrap quilts. She tried needle turn applique and swore that she would NEVER do applique again. Several years later she learned applique from Pearl Pereira and fell in love with this applique technique because it allowed her to get a crisp turned edge and she could indulge those latent perfectionist tendencies. She hand quilts small pieces only. Most of her pieces turn out to be bed sized quilts which she has machine quilted.

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