AMHERST, Va. – 14-year-old Caitlyn Baxter has always known what she’s wanted.
“She was about to turn five years old, and she proclaimed to my friend that she was getting a sewing machine for her fifth birthday,” her mom, Tiffany said, laughing.
Caitlyn’s mom Tiffany was a quilter herself, so naturally she obliged, ”I thought that would be really fun for her to have her own little sewing machine that she could start to make quilts with.”
While most kids are learning to ride bikes at five, Caitlyn was making her first quilt.
“My first quilt was called flower power and it was all pink, pink, pink, pink thread, pink fabric,” Caitlyn said.
Around the same time was when her dad introduced her to golf, “So before I was actually playing, I remember he would pick me up from preschool and he would take me to the golf course and I would just watch him play golf, and then I got my first clubs and I started playing.”
Being an award-winning quilter was not enough. Caitlyn wanted to be a great golfer, and she’s done just that. She competes among some of the best junior golfers in the country at the Scott Robertson Memorial Tournament — quite the prestigious club to be a part of.
And while quilting and golfing seem like they couldn’t be more different...
“Quilting is like very creative because you get to pick the colors, pick how you want to do it, and you can do it how you want to do it, and then for golf, you know, what you have to do, you have this routine and everything,” Caitlyn said.
But when it comes to dealing with life, they mirror each other pretty well.
“An important thing is if you make a mistake, you just have to go with the flow and you can’t obsess over it,” she said. “You have to learn to move on, if you make a mistake while you’re quilting you just have to step back because honestly it’s just really small and the quilt is just gonna be huge, and appreciate what you’ve made because it’s just amazing.”
Wise beyond her years, whether it’s on the sewing machine or the green, Caitlyn Baxter knows what she wants, and knows how to achieve it.