My Pattern Design Business Experience - Part Seven!

This week I want to wrap up this blog series on starting a pattern design business and thank everyone that has read it and continues to follow my blog posts. Over the past several weeks, I have talked a little bit about myself and why I decided to start my business. Additionally, I covered what it took to start the business and how it has changed over time. Then I jumped into what my average day looks like and how I handle the challenges of running a business.

Before I close, I want to build a little more on a topic I started last week. That is keeping an eye on the industry and what others are doing. Another aspect of this is getting involved with the industry by networking with others in the business. Look for groups or guilds to join, certification to obtain, or just go out and make friends that quilt. There are many reasons for this, and the primary one is that you can not run a successful business in a vacuum. No one will know you exist.

More importantly, no one knows everything, and getting out and being apart of the industry allows learning from others. For several years, I was an ambassador for Island Batiks. During this period, as an ambassador, I had to produce projects monthly for them that helped them advertise their fabric lines. In return, I receive sample fabric from them and other quilting notions. More importantly, they challenged my design skills and forced me to think out of the box. As a result, I believe I am a better designer over what I would have been without their challenges.

Then when I discovered the Studio 180 Design Tools and the Sue Pelland Designs Templates and became certified. I learned that I needed to start teaching, which is another skill that I am still working on mastering. Anyway, becoming certified has opened me to additional pathways for income for my business. On top of that, these groups host training events that only certified instructors are invited too. During these events, new techniques are covered, old skills can be refined, and most importantly, friendships are built. These new friends can be great for encouragement, lending a hand, or just being someone to talk to that shares a common interest.

Finally, I believe it is important to start attending the trade shows, for example, Spring and Fall Quilt Markets. These shows are reserved for professionals in the quilting industry. They are a great way to meet quilt shop owners, fabric company representatives, and even distributors. It is also a great venue that you can show off your latest designs and products. Attending the shows can be expensive, but in the long run, the interest you can generate in your plans will hopefully cover the cost.

Now, I want to close the series with the questions; if I knew everything back then that I know now, would I still start this business? I would answer yes to that. Although, if I could go back in time with my current knowledge, I am sure I would make some changes along the way and do a couple of things differently. However, overall, I do not believe I would make wholesale changes. My business is a lot of work and eats up a lot of time, but it is my passion that I wish to share with everyone.

Again, thank you for following along on my journey.

Tina

My Pattern Design Business Experience - Part Six!

Welcome back to my blog series on starting and running a quilt pattern business. If you have missed any of this series, be sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Last week, I started to highlight a few of the unexpected benefits of starting and running a business and focusing on building.  Showing how my self-confidence has grown from facing the challenges of running a business. This week, I want to focus on a few of the challenges and how I have dealt with them.

There are a lot of challenges to running a business, from getting it started, financing, operations, deadlines, and the list can go on and on. Then there is also the challenge of what happens when things just do not go right. That is the challenge I want to talk about this week. How do you handle it when you work days, weeks, or even months on a project only to have it fall flat?

In the quilt pattern design business, this could be a new design that took a lot of time and effort to develop. Then on the release, you receive a lot of positive comments, but very few sales. Sadly, you cannot pay the bills on positive feedback, sales are what keep the bill paid and the business moving forward.

Expending a lot of time and effort on a large project only to generate a few small sales can be very disheartening. It may make you question what you are doing, and is it worth it? How you answer this question can determine on if you stay in business or not.

In my view, there are only two different reactions you can have to this type of challenge. The first and easiest is to feel sorry for yourself, and all that will do is lead to negative emotions making you question yourself even more. The other reaction would be to say to yourself, “Ok, that did not go as planned. What can I learn from this and do better next time?” Of course, the second option is the most obvious choice, but it also can be the most difficult. It is easy to feel sorry for yourself and maybe even take poor sales personally because you put a lot of yourself into every project. It is harder to take an objective view and try to see what went wrong and what can be improved upon next time.

This brings up the point that it is essential to continually be examining what you are doing and how it may fit into the current or future market. Meaning does your design fit with the direction the market is going. It is hard to generate sales when you develop an overly complicated, time-consuming pattern when the market may be trending to quick and straightforward projects. That is where devoting time to studying what others are doing can be crucial. I want to make it clear, and I am not saying to copy others, just be aware of what others are doing and to what success. Then examine what you are doing and look for ways to improve.

From what I have learned over the years, pattern development can be a tough business to make successful by itself. I love designing quilt patterns and seeing them come to life. Even more, I love seeing when another quilter makes one of my patterns and shares it with the world. To me, that is a great reward. However, that does not make money or pay the bills. Generating revenue from sales is what pays the bills.

See you next Tuesday,

Tina

My Pattern Design Business Experience - Part Five!

Welcome back to my blog series on starting and running a quilt pattern business. If you have missed any of this series, be sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.  Last week I continued to talk about the commitment to starting a business, focusing more on the time commitment. This week, I want to highlight a few of the unexpected benefits of starting and running a business. These benefits are not centered around just a quilt pattern design business. Still, I believe it would come with running almost any small business.

When I was introducing this blog series, I talked briefly about that when I started my business at the time, I was a government employee. I was working in Washington DC and felt like I was not going where I wanted to be in life. I guess I felt like I was not in control of what I was doing and was not satisfied. It is kind of hard to explain, but mainly a feeling that I wanted to do something that I would be excited to get out of bed in the morning and get to work. Instead of having to drag myself out of bed, dread a long commute only to be stuck in an office. Then have another long commute to get back home, only to have a few hours to relax before going to bed and then repeating it the following day. I am sure I just described half of the working people in America, but that is how I felt.

With a focus on wanting to do something I enjoyed, I quit my government job and went to work for myself. In doing so, I achieved the goal of finding a job I genuinely want and look forward to doing every day. Now, don’t get me wrong; there are a lot of challenges and frustrations that come from running a business. That is where I have found several unintended benefits that I was not expecting.

To better understand this, let me describe my personality a little bit. First, I am an introvert and generally on the quiet side. I always had some difficulties talking to strangers and was never comfortable speaking in front of a group of people. Also, as a result of growing up with some learning disabilities, I have struggled with self-confidence. In running a business, I have been forced to overcome all of these issues. That is not to say that they are gone, I have more learn to recognize them for what they are and do what needs to be done.

To run my business, I have become a certified instructor in both the Studio 180 Design Tools and the Sue Pelland Design Tools. To do this, I had not only to learn the tool but demonstrate that I could teach others to use them as well. It is forcing me to deal with being in front of groups of people. Additionally, I have hosted booths at a couple of Quilt Markets, actually running the first one all by myself. It is incredible what it does for your self-confidence to be able to drive several days across country, set-up, and operate a booth in a major trade show. Then pack it back up and go home and to receive positive feedback from your peers in the process. Now, I know for some that may sound easy. For me, this was a huge undertaking, and I will admit that I was very nervous about the whole thing.

The point of all of this is that I found, no matter what challenges are thrown at me. I have learned that I can overcome them. I know I have strength in myself, and I am accomplishing things that I would have never dreamed of ten years ago. There will always be challenges, and I have also learned that it just takes the mindset to be willing to step up and face the challenge head-on and overcome it. Then move onto the next challenge.

To summarize, the unexpected benefit from starting and running a business is learning to have confidence in myself and that I can accomplish a lot when I put my mind to it. Please join me next week as I continue my blog series.

See you next Tuesday,

Tina

My Pattern Design Business Experience - Part Four!

Welcome back to my blog series on starting and running a quilt pattern business. If you have missed any of this series, be sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. 

Last week, I talked about the commitment to starting a business. First, I hit a little upon the research that should be done before starting, then the financial and time commitments that may be required. This week I want to focus on what my average day looks like and the type of work I am doing.

Now to start with, not every day is the same; it depends on what projects I have going on and what stage any given pattern is in. However, there are a lot of things that require my attention every day, which allows me to keep to a reasonably similar schedule every day.

On most days, I try to get up between 6:00 and 6:30 am. Anna, one of my dogs, usually is my alarm clock because she is generally getting restless by then. Now, the first thing I do is get myself up and on the treadmill for my morning run. The treadmill is new to my house. Before that, I would try to get up even earlier and head to the gym for my exercise. However, that did not always work out, and that is a story that does not belong as part of this blog. Anyway, I find that running first thing in the morning wakes me up and clears my mind for the day’s activity.

After my morning workout, I am on my computer for at least the next several hours. This time is spent handling the business side of things, answering any emails, filling any orders, and anything else that needs my attention. I use this time also to focus on developing social media presents. 

After taking care of the business side of things, it is time to get to work. Of course, work for me is creating quilt patterns. That does not mean that I go straight into the design studio and start sewing quilts.

My days can vary depending on where I am in a specific project. Yes, some days, I will go into my studio and start sewing to work on a display quilt. Typically, I spend most of the first half of the day working on the computer writing pattern instructions, figuring out cutting charts, creating graphics for the patterns. I also work on any other elements that will go into the finished quilt pattern. If I was to take a guess, I only spend about 20% of my time sewing and making quilts. The rest of the time is spent on the computer.

Typically around 5:00 pm or so, my husband will text me saying that he is on the bus heading home from work. This is a 90+ minute commute depending on traffic, so I usually continue working for at least a little while depending on the project, then go and relax for a while until he gets home. Dinner is often a simple affair, and my husband enjoys cooking, so I usually leave that to him. Then after dinner, we both relax on the couch and binge-watch whatever current TV series or sporting event catches our attention. It is usually about this time I either pull out a quilt that needs the binding completed or my laptop and continues work on pattern development. This lasts until bed.

On the weekends, the schedule is not much different, besides a little house cleaning, food shopping, and general chores that need to be done to keep a house functioning. Of course, on the weekends, my husband is usually home and tries to help out where he can with varying levels of success. All told, I typically devote several hours on Saturdays and Sundays working just to say on top of everything and keep to the schedules I have set for myself.

Now, if I were to add up my hours for an average week, I would average anywhere between 10 to 12 hours a day—an additional 7 to 8 hours a day on the weekends. This adds up to an average workweek of 64 to 76 hours a week. Sometimes even more, but rarely less.

Now, again this works well for me and my current lifestyle. Everyone needs to take a close look at their lifestyles and determine what would work best for them. I have heard of people that run a small business from their homes set fixed work hours to keep the business from takeover their lives. They will only start working at a set time in the morning and will quit at a set time at night. Outside of those hours, they will not read emails or accept phone calls related to the business. There will always be more tasks that need to be done than time to do them. That is where good time management comes in. There are thousands of references devoted to time management in the bookstores and on-line, so I will not get into the details. The only thing I will highlight is that it is up to you to decide to set your hours and how much time you spend working. So give it some thought, because if you don’t, you may find your business taking over your life.

Well, that is all for this week. Join me next week to cover one of the unexpected benefits of running a business.

See you next Tuesday,

Tina

My Pattern Design Business Experience - Part Three

Welcome back to my series on starting and running a home-based quilt pattern design business. Over the last two weeks, I talked a little about my history and touched upon why I decided to start my own business. If you missed those blog posts, check them out here. Part One, and Part Two. This week, I want to talk a little about the challenges I ran into.

In starting a business, one of the first challenges I ran into was how to do it. Between my husband and me, we had to figure out the type of business, what laws governed running a business, how to handle the accounting, and figure out the taxes. Luckily, there are a lot of resources available to assist with this. I would recommend starting by visiting the website of the Small Business Administration for your state. They will have most of the resources and information you need to get started. Just know that starting a business is a process, and you will never know everything. It is a good idea to be patient and learn as much as you can before you start; this could pay off in the long run.

Next is the financial part of running a business. The old saying is that you have to have money to make money, and for the most part, I believe that is true. Starting and running a business can be expensive. I did not want to go out and get a loan for my business, although that may be the right direction for some. For me, my husband and I only took out loans to pay for my longarm and domestic sewing machines—everything else we paid for out of pocket. To give you an idea, we have invested around $90,000 to $100,000 into the business over the last eight or more years. That amount was spread out over the years, and we didn’t have to come up with it all at once. However, I did want to highlight it because you should know that running a business does take financial resources. Also, understand that the amount invested will be different for different people depending on how the business was set up and what resources are available.

Finally, I want to talk a little about the time commitment to running a business. Over anything else, I believe the time required may be the biggest surprise to most. When I worked for the

government, I was up early to get to work and then did not get home until early evening. I was working 12+ hours a day or 60+ hours a week, counting commuting time. In starting my business, I found I was doing far more hours than that. Now it is very common for me to be working every day of the week, including weekends, and if I calculate correctly, I put in up to 70+ hours a week. Knowing the possible time commitments of running a business is essential to develop a good work/life balance. I put in the hours because I enjoy what I do and have a real love of quilting. My kids are grown, and my husband works long hours at his government job, so the hours I put in work well for me. For someone else, that may not be the case, and the time commitment will be a lot less per week. The point of this is twofold. First, know that running a business is a big commitment in time. Secondly, a good work/life balance will need to be reached for the business to survive in the long run. If not, running a business will become more of a chore than a joy and burnout will occur.

Now with this week’s blog post, I am not trying to scare people away from starting a quilt pattern business or any other business for that matter. I just want to ensure that if you are considering starting a business, what the financial, time, and knowledge commitments could be. Also, these are my experiences, and yours may be different.

For next week’s blog post, I am going to talk about what my average day looks like.

See you next Tuesday,

Tina

My Pattern Design Business Experience - Part Two!

Welcome back to the second part of my blog series about my experiences in starting and running a quilting business. Last week, I gave a quick introduction to myself and how Quilting Affections Designs came about. This week I am going to focus on the question on if starting a quilt pattern design business is right for you.

To start, I know everyone is different, with different dreams, talents, lifestyles, and financial needs. Which means that everyone’s reason for wanting to start a business will be different. For me, I think it came down to wanting to quit the long commutes and long hours of working for the government and do something that I loved. When I decided to first start my business, I was working as a GS employee at the Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC.

At that time, my average day was getting up very early to catch a commuter bus a little before 6:00 am to get to work by 7:30 am. Then work a 9-hour day and then getting back on the bus to get home around 6:00 pm or later at night, depending on traffic. I can’t say I hated my job, but the long hours with the commute left me tired and drained. The best way I can describe it is that this was not taking me where I wanted to go.

In 2011, my husband retired from the Air Force after 23 years and was now working for a contracting company in DC, earning a good wage. Then in 2012, my youngest son graduated high school and joined the Air Force. With these changes, I decided it was time to start making changes in myself. With the support of my husband, I purchased an APQS Millennium and started to learn how to use it. Then in 2013, I quit my government job and started my own business.

I bring up this history to help explain a little of the background for the reason I started my business. While working for the government, I was tired, felt empty, and was not 100% happy with myself. Life is too short for that, so I decided to make a change. Luckily, from a financial standpoint, my husband and I was at a point where we could not only support ourselves but also finance a small business. Which I learned early on can be a costly endeavor.

Now I want to ask you, are you at a point in your life where you are not happy with the direction your career is going? Do you have a desire to do something different, maybe a creative drive? Starting a small business could be that change in your life that will make a difference.

I do want to throw out a word of caution, starting and running a home-based business is a lot of work, can get very expensive and create challenges that you never dreamed of. That will be the subject of next week’s blog; the challenges of starting and running a business from home.

My Pattern Design Business Experience - Part One!

Starting a quilt pattern design business may sound like a lot of fun and a great way to earn extra income. The reality is that quilt pattern design is a challenging profession that requires and a lot of time and dedication with a lot of hard work. With that in mind, I decided to devote a blog series to my experiences in running a pattern design business from my home. I hope that in sharing the struggles that I have faced and what I have learned will help others decide whether they would want to take the challenge of professionally designing quilt patterns.

First, a little bit about myself and how Quilting Affection Designs came to be. My quilting inspiration comes from my mom and my aunt. I began sewing at an early age on my Holly Hobbie sewing machine. In addition to taking home economics classes, which included sewing.  My love of quilting started while watching my mom make and hand quilt several quilts. After I was married, I took my first quilting class at a local fabric store. Here I discovered my talent and passion for quilting. I even got my first quilting job from my quilt instructor.

For many years while my husband served in the military, I quilted when I could. However, some places we stationed did not make getting quilting supplies easy to understand. So, I would find myself taking long breaks from quilting. We finally ended up in the Washington DC area, and while working, I was again able to take up quilting. Over the next few years, I dedicated myself to learning all could about quilting and all the new tools and technics. 

 

When I first got the idea of starting a home-based quilting business in 2012. I was focusing on becoming a Longarmer and running a quilt finishing service. My youngest son had just gone to basic training in the Air Force, and my husband and I had the opportunity to go to an APQS demonstration in Fredericksburg Va. I have been looking at different longarms at quilt shows for a while. I fell in love with the APQS Millennium, and the time seemed right,

so we took the plunge and ordered one. As I was getting my feet wet in the longarming business in 2013, I decided to design and enter a quilt in the Charles Maryland County fair for fun. I was surprised and excited to find I won best in a show that year. As time went on, I found myself devoting more and more time to designing quilts while my longarming service never really took off. So, in 2016, I decided to spend my time to pattern design and ended my longarming service and Quilting Affection became Quilting Affection Design.

From 2016 to the present, I have been a full-time quilt pattern designer, and what an enjoyable experience it has been. I genuinely love the challenge of coming up with original designs, choosing colors, and working with beautiful fabrics. Above all, I love that my job is to see my creations come to life.

Now, I also need to leave a word of caution because it is not all fun and games. Running a business is a lot of work and requires a lot of time and dedication. I am not trying to scare people away from doing something they love. I just want to ensure that if you are thinking of taking the plunge, you know what you may be getting into.

For the next several weeks, I am going to post about my journey into the world of quilt pattern design, what I have learned, and what I have experienced. Additionally, I will cover what my average day looks like, the tools I use for designing, working with other quilting companies, and the joys/challenges I run into every day. 

Now I want to make clear that this is not a step by step how to start a business blog. The purpose of this blog is to share my experiences and what I have learned in the hope that you will find the information enjoyable and maybe even useful.

Getting Ready for Market!

In 3 weeks time, we will be heading for the Airport to catch a plane for Houston. I'm excited and nervous at the same time.  This will be my first Houston Quilt Market and topping that I will have a small booth to display my Quilts and Patterns, thanks to QuiltWoman.com.  I have a list of things that has to be done but I think it keeps getting longer. I do feel like things are falling into place now.  Last week, I was busy finishing the last Quilt Sample and ordering paper supplies to print catalogs, forms and patterns.

Some of the supplies, like the Business Cards have arrived, just waiting on some more stuff to come.  Trying to save money, this is not going to be cheap trip.

So over the weekend, I embroidering 6 polo shirts with our Company name.  The weekend before, we went to JcPenneys and found 3 polos in the Men's department for $7.00 and 3 in the Woman's Department that were $9.99.  I think they came pretty good for my first time. 

This week, is another week, putting the binding on the Sample I just finished today. And working on the new pattern for the Seams to be Sewing Halloween Blog hop for October. 

Well better go for now and get things done.  

Tina