Welcome to Treasures by T!
- TrishYoung
- Jan 6
- 3 min read
Hello and welcome to the site! I'm Trish, or just T (or T-bird if you know me from summer camp), a fiber artist and maker living in the Pacific Northwest with my best friend and my dog. This first post will serve as an intro to me and my work, a visual starting block for my site, and a bit of publicity as I jumpstart my little brand.
Who is she??
When my mom first taught me to sew in 2020, I didn't imagine I'd end up here, making my own website and selling my products. But hey, these things happen, right??
As a recent college grad with a passion for people, I moved to Salem, Oregon this summer and started searching for work. It took me a few months, but now I'm working at a sewing center with lovely coworkers and fancy machines. However, being around sewing machines and sewists all day has only stoked the mental fires of creation, driving me to keep making new things and experimenting with design. I've started making items to sell, customizing clothing, and creating individualized products for friends, slowly expanding my network of customers as I learn and create more. And I've discovered that I absolutely adore creating custom pieces for people.
Growing up, I learned the values of hard work and doing a thorough job on whatever you start. With two wood-burning stoves in the house, I started helping out by carrying kindling and firewood into the house when I was too small to hold even the hatchet, slowly graduating through chopping the kindling and smaller pieces of wood into splitting my own rounds of wood with an axe or maul.
Thanks to my dad's passions, most summers (and non-summer holidays) were spent outdoors. We camped, backpacked, hiked, and climbed all over the Sierra Nevada and beyond, with my dad making friends wherever we went. I didn't realize what a privilege that sort of upbringing was until I reached college, where I met peers who had never been able to see the Milky Way in a clear night sky.
My mom's side of the family is where much of my creative nature - and nurture - come from. Over the years I've heard many stories about the women of our family and their propensity for needlework and other textile arts, something generally well known in the Scandinavian world of family life. And actually, our family tree is quite huge. I'm talking "nationwide family reunion held at a college in Wisconsin" huge. While I was too little to remember much, there's something comforting about knowing that dozens of women before me have done the same tasks and created the same pieces of art that I have.
As I grew and went through middle and high school, I started to develop the skills and experiences I would take with me into college and beyond. I was in almost every group I could possibly be a part of: theater (Spamalot!, Anne of Green Gables, and The Addams Family), volleyball, track & field (pole vault and hurdles), student leadership, Mock Trial and Academic Decathlon, several clubs, and the few AP classes my high school offered. I backpacked over the summer and packed my brain with facts during the school year. And while I made a lot of friends and memories, not many have lasted the years of separation since we graduated.
And then, as we all know, came the COVID years. I was a 2020 graduate, one of many who received my high school diploma via a drive-through line on an otherwise deserted campus. I had applied and been accepted at a few colleges, and eventually committed to the University of Oregon and the Clark Honors College ('sko Ducks!). Over the summer, my dad and I backpacked as usual (albeit keeping quite far from everyone else on the trails) and my mom taught me how to sew. When I moved into my dorm in September, I genuinely wasn't sure what to expect.
What followed was four years of worthwhile memories: fascinating classes, bored-to-tears lectures, making and losing friends, exploring Eugene's cafes, cross-state trips with the marching band, and competing in club rowing at my peak fitness level. There's more to it than that, of course, but that's for another day and another post.
Love this, and so proud of you!