Hi-I am Gail (Marie Littlefield Blanchette) LaPrino and my lifelong passion has been playing with fabric. I was born and grew up in Hampden, a little town in central Maine, and I have been sewing since I was 8 years old. My Nana, Josephine Littlefield, was the town dressmaker of tiny Monroe and taught me to sew on her old beige Singer. Since I was a skinny kid and nothing fit correctly, I liked making my own clothes. Plus I was a bit of a rebel and liked to wear unique clothes rather than trends. In high school, other than doing drama club and the fact that I had no athletic abilities whatsoever, I was happy to sit home sewing in my spare time. Sometimes I would get together with other friends and we would spend an entire Saturday sewing. Yeah, we were pretty wild! I started doing repairs and alterations for fellow students when I went to college at UMO(Univ. Maine at Orono) sometimes getting paid in beer & pizza. As a young mother of 3, I started taking on bigger tailoring projects. My mother-in-law, Dot Blanchette of Ellsworth, was the most amazing dressmaker and tailor and I am so blessed that she taught me everything she knew about it. I moved to the Boston area in the 1980’s, took a class at Newbury College for Garment Pattern Making, and started sewing wedding attire. One of my creations was featured on the Oct 1991 cover of New England Bride Magazine. In the 1990’s I met Pat Foley and together as Dancing Designs we designed and made dance competition costumes for over 15 years. I continued costume making in a shop in downtown Portland after moving back to Maine. I also had an online shop for a few years selling dance costume fabrics to other costumers worldwide and wrote a book about sewing costumes which made it into the Nancy Notion’s catalog. I had watched Nancy on PBS for years and loved her show so was pretty excited she took on selling my book. After hand surgery in 2012, I retired from costume making and became a Realtor. I still did sew some things like aprons and coasters and sold them in a gift shop. Late in 2019, not even knowing that a pandemic was coming and I would have LOTS of time on my hands, I took up quilting. I had stumbled across a funny lady on youtube named Jenny Doan doing video tutorials of how to make quilts and thought “I can do this even with my now weak thumbs.” I think I made close to 30 kids charity quilts in 2020 alone. I fell in love with FMQ (free motion quilting) and dreamed of getting a big longarm machine. That dream came true in 2024 and now I am back in the sewing biz offering my quilting services to help others finish their creations. I have a Janome Quilt Maker Pro 20 longarm on a 12 foot frame equipped with the Prostitcher computer robotics system. I offer Edge 2 Edge quilting at this time. I can do anything from placemats to king sized bedquilts.