My Story Part 2: From “I Could Do This” to “I’m Doing This”
In my last post, I shared how I went from helping my grandma at doll shows to teaching myself to quilt to starting this blog. This one is about the moment I decided to open a quilt shop, and everything I had to learn before I could open a single door.
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A friend an hour away
A couple of years into blogging, I became friends with a quilt shop owner about an hour from home. I’d been tossing around the idea of opening a shop of my own for a while. There really wasn’t a quilt shop close to us at all. But it was still just an idea I’d turn over in my head now and then.
My friend did something incredibly generous. She let me see behind the curtain of how a quilt shop actually runs.
My first trade show (and a big case of imposter syndrome)
Part of that behind-the-curtain education was H&H Americas, a big trade show where manufacturers and designers show their products to shop owners. My friend, another friend, and I went together. I attended as a blogger and content creator.
It was overwhelming. I had serious imposter syndrome. Everyone setting up booths was there to sell to shop owners, and I wasn’t one. I felt like I didn’t belong. So I mostly stood back, let my friend do her buying and have her conversations, and soaked everything in. I looked at products, saw what was new in the industry, and quietly took notes in my head.
Looking back, I think I was already more serious about opening a shop than I admitted to myself at the time.
The Shop Hop that changed everything
Right after H&H came the very first Indiana Shop Hop, and I spent it helping out at my friend’s shop. That weekend is when the idea stopped being “maybe someday.”
“It wasn’t one big moment. It was being surrounded by friends who quilt, talking about it over and over, and getting more excited every time.”
We kept coming back to the same things. We need quilt shops. We need younger quilt shop owners. By the end of that weekend, I was thinking, yeah, I’m probably going to do this.
Right around that time, Joann’s closed. Suddenly the gap in our area wasn’t just a quilt shop gap. There was hardly anywhere left nearby to even buy fabric.
That weekend gave me something else, too. A customer at my friend’s shop saw one of my quilts hanging on the wall as a sample and asked if I longarmed for other people. Up to then, I’d quilted for my mother-in-law and a few people I knew. She became my first real client who wasn’t family or a friend. That longarm I bought “just for my own quilts” was starting to have other ideas.
I ended up working at my friend’s shop for nearly a year, and I learned so much there.
Teaching has always been part of me
Here’s the other piece of the puzzle. Before I had kids, I was an X-ray tech, and I taught X-ray students at the local university for a couple of years. Then I homeschooled my own kids for 12 years. Teaching is just a big part of who I am.
The blog had already become a way to teach. Somewhere along the way it clicked: I could teach people to quilt in person, too. A shop could be a place to do that.
So it wasn’t a sudden decision, but it wasn’t a slow, years-long one either. It was more like, “Hmm, I think I could do this… let’s do it.”
“Let’s open a quilt shop”
When I brought it up with my husband, he was on board from the very beginning. He has been completely supportive, emotionally and financially, and he has never held back. I don’t take that for granted for one second.
We talked a lot about how to start. Fabric has to be ordered six to nine months ahead, so you can’t just decide to open a shop next month and fill it with fabric. I already had an online presence through the blog. So we decided I’d start with an online shop first. That would let me get my feet wet, find out whether I actually liked retail, and learn the back end of the business. Point of sale and an online presence is such a big part of running a brick-and-mortar shop, and I wanted to understand it before customers were standing at my counter.
The not-so-glamorous paperwork
Before any fabric could arrive, there was paperwork. My husband and I already owned a corporation for our construction business, so I understood why a separate business entity matters. I’d also started earning a little from blog ad revenue and longarming, and I wanted that money kept separate. Most of all, I wanted to protect our personal assets. If someone dropping off a quilt tripped and fell, I didn’t want that to put our home at risk.
To become a retailer, I also needed a state retail and resale certificate. That lets a shop buy inventory without paying sales tax on it, and then collect and send in sales tax when the product is sold. With that in hand, I could set up accounts with fabric companies and start buying.
I launched the online store on WooCommerce and later moved to Shopify. Those first orders, and the first boxes of fabric arriving, made it all feel real.
The online shop was always meant to be step one. Step two was finding a home for Treeline Quilting, and that turned out to be a long and winding road.
Next time: rent math, a $400,000 building with terrible parking, and the piece of land that was hiding in plain sight.
