With the holidays approaching many people are
preparing to spend time with family, whether for a meal or a few days. It's
often the best part of the holidays (though you can argue that the food is a
close second!).
We started thinking about families we know who sew together
and wanted to focus on some talented dynamic duos who create patterns using our
fabric—related by blood and sewing together by choice. We'll be sharing their stories over the next week.
First up: Yvonne Cabell and Angie Mueller of Sisters' Common Thread
Yvonne and Angie |
Tell us about how/when you learned to quilt.
Angie: I never was a
seamstress other than making an apron in Home Ec Class. Mom sewed almost all of our clothes
when we were young. I didn’t
have to sew. When we were older
I’d drive by Yvonne’s home on the way to work and drop off a pattern and some
fabric – and on the way home I’d
stop back for a fitting. So there
was no need for me to learn! A friend who ran the church quilt group asked if I
would join them for a ''mystery project'' and mentioned we'd go out to eat
afterwards. She grabbed my attention with the going out to eat part, and I got
hooked on the quilting too.
Yvonne: Heck, I was probably
5 when mom let me sit in her lap and sew up a doll dress with no pattern. Sewing and designing just came
naturally to me. Back in the 70’s,
when my kids were little, my term for quilting was “recycling.” Quilting was not an art then and it
certainly wasn’t an industry like it is now.
Why did you start quilting together?
Angie: After my first project
I made a king-size rail fence quilt as a gift but couldn’t quilt it. Soon after that Yvonne and I were
shopping together and I remember we were sitting in the parking lot of a mall
talking about what we had always wanted to do in life – I wanted to own a
Laundromat and a mini-storage. Surprisingly she said a mini-storage was on her list too. We talked about the quilts she was
making and the one that I could not get under my machine to quilt and started
talking about long-arm machines – well, to cut the story short, within a month
we were driving to Iowa to pick up our new Millennium by APQS. We long-armed together for a few years.
In 2004 we ran into a mitten that just simply was not put
together well – the thumb just wasn’t good and we thought “we can do better
than that” so we created the Toastie Mitten pattern. We sold that single
pattern and taught classes until 2010, when Yvonne came up with the Caddy Pad
idea.
Caddy Pad |
Eight patterns and two Quilt Markets later, our company started to take
off.
Yvonne and Angie in their booth at Market |
How do you divide up the
work?
Angie: It didn’t take me very
long to realize that I was not a pattern designer and designing was always in
Yvonne’s blood. Yvonne is
absolutely brilliant. Company
duties just naturally divided themselves, we didn’t even need to talk about
it. I started the number crunching
end of the business and Yvonne had time to design.
Yvonne: Angie’s a natural on
the phones and interfacing with customers and distributors. She keeps track of the sales, website,
invoicing, shipping etc. I, on the
other hand, stammer when the phone rings and say really inappropriate things
that Angie has to apologize for later so I only pick up a phone in an
emergency.
We have a lovely studio in
Angie’s home, and Yvonne drives over once a week. We spend our time working/playing/planning and Yvonne spends
the night and goes home the next afternoon – these are the two best – absolute
best – days of the week for us both. We kick the patterns back and forth via email, me writing and Angie
formatting and making pretty. Decisions just seem to fall into place; we did enough fighting as kids
that it’s pretty much out of our systems by now.
Any good stories about
getting your business started?
Angie: Funny thing happened to us on the way to
market: Kansas City, 2012, first
market, HUGE deal. We had this
adorable little 8’ trailer, with a picture of Mona Lisa on the side, holding a
Caddy Pad.
Mona Lisa needs a Caddy Pad! |
Our trailer was pulled
by a little blue Jeep Liberty, filled to the brim with precious market booth
cargo – fixtures, inventory, brochures, models, booth drapes, everything. Oh my goodness were we ever excited and so very, very
important!! We were just flying on
cloud 9!! We stopped at a rest
stop along I35 – typical pit stop – and as we came out of the building and
proceeded across the parking lot to the parking area this was what we saw.
That’s us on the right if you
didn’t guess. Wow, what a reality
check. We were so humbled. After standing in the middle of the lot
laughing hysterically at the sight of us we realized we’re just a small fish in
a very big pond, and ever so glad to be part of the greatest
industry in the world with the greatest people.
How did you get involved with Benartex?
Angie: We
were walking around Quilt Market in Portland and were absolutely DRAWN to the Benartex booth. We sat down and ordered the entire Moon Shadows line by Michele D'Amore. We absolutely LOVED it, could not take our eyes off it. Our intent is to make an entire line of bags using Moonshadows.
Can we see some of your patterns made with Moon Shadows?
The 990: We saw a
designer bag that we absolutely loved, but it was selling for $990 (outrageous!) and the fabric
really wasn't very attractive. Yvonne
took inspiration from that and created The 990 pattern.
The 990 |
The Quick Change
(garment bag) and New York Style (huge tote that the Quick Change can slip
into) are two upcoming patterns--watch for their release soon! The New York Style and Quick Change Garment bag are items that can get you through a little weekend trip in great style, just big enough to hold a couple changes of clothes and other necessities.
The name says it all for this purse or makeup bag; it'll hold what you need!
My Essentials |
Running a business probably
isn’t supposed to be this much fun – we are INCREDIBLY BLESSED – and having the
time of our lives.
p.s. We did, by the way, buy that
mini-storage together, but that’s another story for another day!!!
Find more about Angie and Yvonne and their patterns here.
See the entire Moon Shadows collection here.
I thoroughly enjoyed the interview--went to the website and signed up for their newsletter.
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ReplyDeleteNice!!
DeleteActually self storage is not as sexy as most people think. It is all about location. If the location is far from major highway, you will have hard time finding any customer
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