Emily Howard, the creative force behind Two Peas, started to sew as a young pioneer newlywed, when, lonely and bored while her husband drove the cattle, she lived in a remote cabin in the desert of the great American southwest.

She didn't have a phone, television, or central air, but by golly she had a sewing machine, an eye for color, and stacks of gorgeous textiles, which she bought off the mule cart of a traveling tinker. So she started making coffee cozies and eye bags for the other pioneer ladies.

Today she has an iphone, but she kept the sewing machine anyway. She now lives in Decatur, Georgia, a much more civilized place than New Mexico, with her husband, three children, seven chickens, a few wacky-sidekick neighbors, and a cat named Henry.