Working Woman

My Dear Husband lost his job 2 years ago.  We're struggling financially.  The miracle is that we've been able to pay our bills and have "sufficient for our needs."  We've had a little help from family and friends along the way, which we are very grateful for.  And my health and mental state have never been better.  I've been strong and able to provide for my family.  I work 3 jobs.

Job #1 is working 4 full days per week at a quilt shop, which I LOVE.  I mostly work downstairs, where I get to help with sewing machine servicing and repair, and I do the shipping for Kathy Quilts.  Sometimes, I get to go upstairs and play with fabric, sell Bernina sewing machines and interact with the customers.  The people I work with are all really great people.  I feel privileged to be a "Bernina Lady."  Here's the store's blog:  Stylish Fabrics Quilt Shop

Job #2 is sewing pectus brace covers for T-Joe of Pectus Services.  T-Joe (Trainer Joe) LOVES the kids he works with.  He helps kids with deformed chests (pectus).  The way he does it is with a brace that he invented.  The brace, as you can imagine, is not comfortable.  When my son wore it, it really irritated his skin, and it got pretty stinky, pretty fast.  My solution was to make fabric covers for his brace.  It really helped his skin irritation and, we could remove the cover and wash it to keep it smelling better.

So, when we showed Joe the covers, he said, "I want ALL of the kids to have covers!"  I wasn't really interested in doing all of that sewing at first.  I even gave Joe the patterns and he tried to get a couple sewing companies to manufacture the covers.  It was a good thing they didn't end up being manufactured, or we wouldn't have the income that we so badly need right now.

When I say, "we," I mean our whole family.  DH and all 3 of our sons help with the production.  I still do most of the sewing, but our oldest son is using the sewing machine to sew Velcro on, and he's started to use the serger to sew the pieces together.  He's doing great!  The other Guys do the pinning, cutting, more pinning, singeing the threads and packaging.  We're very grateful to Joe for supporting our family in this way!

Here's the Pectus Services website:  Pectus Services  Check out the "before and after" pictures.

Job #3 is Quilted Sunshine.  I sell my patterns locally, and on a few websites as either pdf downloads or as paper patterns.  Check the links on the left side of my blog.  I also teach quilting and sewing classes.

I Love teaching classes!  There are a few classes that I teach over and over.  My Beginning Piecing Workshop is 4 days, and we learn everything from rotary cutting and scant 1/4" seams, to matching points and putting the borders on. I also regularly teach Beginning Binding and Sewing Machine Care and Maintenance classes.  I'd like to add a Beginning Paper Piecing Class, and a Fabric Selection Class.  I also teach my denim quilt patterns and all of my other patterns, whenever I can.

Here's the link to my website:  Quilted Sunshine  There are 3 FREEBIES on my website:  Binding Tutorial, Mitered Receiving Blanket pattern, and "The Simple Quilt" pattern.