We started offering our quilts online a couple months ago and until that time, I was the docile husband that watched on the sidelines as my wife designed, built and mildly quilted her creations for numerous family members and connected family members. Up until recently, I was an ER Nurse who worked 12 hour shifts at one of the local Hospitals with a high cardiac reputation. I loved my job, but as fate would have it, I was disabled with my feet having plantar fasciitis, a crippling disease that probably could have been avoided if I had more sense to use another means of moving a vehicle than pushing it with pure body force. The result of that stupidity was a torn ligament on the bottom of my foot that led to surgery, which resulted in neuropathy. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t able to perform my job and was more or less forced into retirement after a year off work with this problem.

                Since that time, I started an internet business that flopped before it even got started. The leather industry is a hard profession to get into if you’re expecting to do it all online. The competition is horrendous and therefore the business flopped with only 3 sales in a 10 month period. Had I had enough monies to also start a storefront in the area I live, the business would have had a very good chance, because there are no leather shops in the immediate area. I folded that business and using the program I was already paying for, I removed all the leather products, name and pages and built a website that my wife and I decided would profit good with the fact that all the services would be home grown, another words, very low overhead and minimal stock storage. This was a great idea until I got involved more than just punching keys on the computer.  All of that soon changed and actually, I was glad to do it. It gave my life the change it needed and the ability to make an income.

                We bought a quilt sewing machine and frame that I had to modify for what we were about to do, but now that rickety frame is solid and the machine had to go to the shop for timing and repair, so it’s now running appropriately to quilt a bedspread with minimal thread breakage. After watching the wife design a few spreads and see what she was going through to build them herself, I decided to design my own ideas and have had a few screw-ups I will be passing along. First of all, it took me nearly a day to design a ‘hunter’s quilt’ with 6 different fabric patterns, all of which were camouflage or green fabric that we had in stock. Once the design was figured out, with my wife great input, which helped tremendously, I cut out the squares ending up with too few of one pattern and too many of another, so I ended up with seven patterns which according to my wife happens a lot when you use what you have instead of purchasing all new fabric from the local fabric store.

                Secondly, I put the two cut out fabric’s together to sew at angles and make up the triangles needed for my quilt. After getting them all sewn together, I realized I had sewn them together back to back and thus after I cut them on the line I had made, the fabrics were backwards and I had to figure out how I was going to resolve this issue. My wife came to my rescue and I was instructed to cut the patterns on the sew line, which was going to make my quilt smaller in the end than what I had anticipated, but it was either that or spend the next two or three days removing the stitch and sewing them face to face as they needed to be sewn. Lucky for me, I had sewn the original patterns together with a ¼” sew line, so I ended up only ¼” off the original size. All of the patterns were sewn together and I was going to the next step of placing each pattern in sequence for the rows to be sewn together. This is where I found out its not good practice to have company over and try to do this little deed while entertaining them. Two of the patterns were backwards in the sequence, but I didn’t find out until I dad sewn them together and then sewn the rows together to form the quilt top.

That’s when I found out that two of the patterns were reversed and thus I had to remedy my screw up once again. All of this took another two hours out of the build time. Four days later from the time I had started this little project, I was placing the build on the quilting frame to be quilted. This was the part I was getting good at and thus it went as planned without a hitch. It took about three hours to quilt the spread with batting and the back side all quilted together with a semi easy stitch pattern. It turned out to be a beautiful quilt and my wife stepped in at the right time to save my over confidence in this build. We decided it would be best if she finishes the edges, but all in all, I learned what it takes to build a quilt from start to finish, so to speak. This quilt along with many other builds we have for sale are now on line and can be seen at http://www.quiltsbyladyzoe.com.

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