My love of sewing started back in 1990. My husband and I just had our first baby girl and we were living in base housing at Los Angeles Air Force Base, CA. I meet my dearest friend Priscilla Broemmel. We would go shopping for fabric, patterns and all kinds of great notions. My sewing machine was in a corner of our bedroom. Base housing for a Lieutenant was rather small.
Through the years I would sew clothes for our children. Our family quickly grew. When we had 4 girls, I made all 4 girls and me matching outfits for Maggie's baptism. How I did that, I am not sure. I thought we looked cute. My girls now make fun of that picture. That is ok. I look forward to the day that my granddaughter makes fun of her mom. Payback are great.
We now have 8 children, ages from 27 to twins that are 12. Our family is still growing as our children are now having babies. We currently have 2 grandchildren.
I took a quilting class 4 years ago and caught the bug. I started dreaming of quilting as a business. I found this great machine called a longarm quilter. I was super in love. I dreamed of quilting day and night. Ok, I still do. That has not gone away. I found this used longarm that was only 400 miles from my home in Omaha. I literally called my friend Sheila on a Thursday and asked her if she would like to ride with me to Scottsbluff the very next day. She said yes and we were off. We drove in bitter cold in the dark on Friday night. On Saturday we went to the house and picked up the longarm. I found out that the owner had called her Molly. I keep her beautiful name.
Molly was then set up in our basement and I opened Fabric Bash. I started helping a quilting group quilt their charity quilts for Project Linus. I am still quilting for this beautiful quilt group. Soon customer quilts started coming in. I was never more happy and honored to work on these amazing quilts. The first year I was on a huge learning curve. I have taken longarm classes in person, online and viewed thousand of videos. I will never stop learning. I just love watching quilting videos. Fabric Bash has been growing and I have been living the dream, listening to Molly hum.
On that trip back in January 2017, I remember telling Sheila that I would love to open a store where my family could work. Jacob, my son-in-law as of May 2017 started to get the bug to own his own business. As we talked, he liked the job he was at being an installation technician, but some of the job was not his favorite. He loved the customer service side of his job. As I talked about owning a store, he thought it would be great to be the machine repair guy. From that point on, we were a team.
An opportunity was present to us in October of 2018. I heard that Jackie at A Quilting Place wanted to sell. I made a call to her the next day and she said that they were interested in selling. I met with Jackie over coffee and made an instant connection. I felt the love she had for her store and customers right away. She said that she liked my enthusiasm and energy. It seems like we were there drinking coffee for just a few minutes, but in reality it was a couple of hours.
We agreed to move forward and as of the 28th of January 2019 my dream of owning a store with my family is a reality. Jacob and I will have the support of our spouses and my other 6 children and spouses. This truly a family owned business.
Jackie and Don have been just wonderful in all this transition. They are the most kind people. I am happy that they can move on to the next part of their lives. But, they will always be a part of A Quilting Place. We will try our best to have their legacy live on.
I am looking so forward to meeting you all and helping you with your quilts. Please stop by and say hi. Coffee and tea will be on.