The End of an Era: Closing the “Custom” Side of LoveBug Studios

Over the last couple of weeks, ever since my guild’s quilt retreat, I’ve been noodling over how to stop doing things I don’t want to do, and focus on the things that I do want & will help to move me toward my goals.  I was on the fence until this crazy dream I had last night really brought it home.  As a result, I am no longer making custom quilts or handbags.

So here’s what I can remember of this dream…

I got hired to babysit these three kids, in Alaska.  There was only one flight to Alaska on a prop plane that would get me to the school on time to pick up the kids, and I made it to the airport and got on the plane. Strange thing was, their mother was on the plane with me.

When I got on the plane, I didn’t know what seat was mine, and there were four open seats.  I didn’t have a boarding pass for some reason, so I asked the pilot if I could go back into the terminal and get one.  He said “Go ahead.”  Well, I got back to the gate, got my boarding pass, but I had to go back through security.  The had me empty my pockets, and I had a thimble, a stack of LBS business cards, and one more thing I can’t remember.

Well, I got through security easily, went back to the plane, sat in my seat (it was the center one) and the pilot prepared to leave.  That’s when I remembered that I forgot to grab my stuff from security.  So I asked the pilot again if I could go back and get it.  He said, “Sure, but I have to start my safety checks and so you only have 5 minutes.”  No problem, right?  Because I only needed to get my stuff from security.

Well, the plane had the engine on, I remember, and it was very loud.  He had moved the plane away from the gate and we were sitting on the tarmac.  As I made my way back to the terminal, I got back to the same security station and asked the TSA person if they had my things.  He sent me to a window, where I asked the clerk if she had my things.  She didn’t know what I was talking about.  So finally I saw the guy who had done my screening, and asked him if he had my things, and he pretended to search for them, even standing up on a chair at one point and looking on top of the x-ray machine.  I asked him, “Why would my business cards and thimble be on top of the x-ray machine?”  He said something like, “If you can’t keep track of your own things, why should I?”

I started to feel like it wasn’t worth it to have gone back for those things… I mean, a thimble and business cards are easily replaced, right?  So I turned around and tried to go back to the plane, but I couldn’t find the original door I had come through, so I just picked one and went outside.  I ended up in a breezeway, and I could hear the plane but couldn’t see it.  I started running down this dirt track to try and see around the building, but I couldn’t find the plane.  I went a different way, and thought I saw the nose of my plane, but it turned out to be a military transport.  I was trying to get back to the tarmac, but the ground was crumbling under me and I wasn’t making any progress.  I knew at that point that the plane had taken off without me, even though I had hoped that the pilot would wait, but I had taken so much time, and gotten lost, that I missed my plane, and lost my babysitting job too.

Now, I am not really into a lot of metaphysical mumbo jumbo, but I do believe that the brain uses the time that we sleep to process information, and tries to make sense of the events of the day & synthesize it with the rest of what’s stored in our head.

When I woke up this morning (at around 4:30 – it was a strange dream that wouldn’t end, I had to force myself to wake up because I just kept running in place) I remembered a great deal of this dream, and I think it pretty well sums up how I have been feeling.

To me, the TSA people represented distractions and delays – delays that I cause myself, and delays that I let other people cause.  The fact that I left behind my business cards and thimble – this tells me that I have been forgetting what’s important about my business – getting my name out there, and focusing on the work that will get me noticed. (I don’t know to what extent a thimble is an essential tool for me, but I suppose it would have been ridiculous to be carrying a sewing machine in my pocket.)

The pilot I think represents me, at least the part of me that gives me permission to do things that are completely unnecessary and unfocused, because they will only “take 5 minutes.”  I do get sidetracked a lot, and most of it is my own doing.  The pilot reminded me that I only had 5 minutes or I would miss my opportunity, but still I thought I had enough time to do everything. So the part of me that knows I can’t do everything, isn’t very strong-willed.  The pilot is not in control.

I also got lost in the dream, and I think that says a lot about how I’ve been feeling with my business.  The pressure to finish things quickly so I can move on, but I’m not really moving, I am running in place… because the things I am “finishing” aren’t really important.  Not knowing which way to turn, and having too many choices.  Forgetting which door leads to the opportunity.

So it is with that understanding & clarity – although I’m still a little groggy based on how I woke up – that I come to the decision to shut down part of LoveBug Studios, and stop taking orders for custom quilts and handbags.

When I started my business, it was based on the premise that I would be able to work with customers to design a quilt that they wanted, select the fabric, make the quilt, finish it, and move on.  It satisfied my desire to only make something once, presented challenges & problems that I could solve, and let me exercise creativity to a certain extent.

However, over the past 5 years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve come to realize that customers come with their own vision, their own strong preferences, and it often crushes my creativity, and far too many people want photographs in their quilts (which I personally think are horrid.)  Actually, my mom is one of those people.  She sent me a packet of photos from my 7th birthday party that she wants made into a quilt.  Ummm… where do you think that quilt will eventually end up?  I’m an only child; you do the math.

I get calls quite often for t-shirt quilts & quilts made from ties and baby clothes and randomness.  I don’t like working with those strange materials in quilts, not one bit.  I did stop taking those in last year, but people still call.

As for the custom handbags… that too can sometimes be a challenge.  Yes, I made a diaper bag last month and it was fabulous, but my heart wasn’t in it.  I like making handbags because I feel like it, not because I have to.  Plus, I rarely have the fabric that people want, or enough of it, so that’s a scramble to search for it and buy more, if it can be found, and the time it takes to do that far exceeds the time to actually make it.

Over the past 5 years, I’ve learned a lot about myself, and I continue to learn about and explore the type of quilter I want to be.  I think first and foremost, I am a designer and author, and if I am to be successful (in the way that I want to be) those need to be my focus.  Quilt designing, pattern writing, books & magazines… all the other stuff that I do must be put in service to that, or it has to go.

So where does that leave LoveBug Studios?  Well, it essentially is a long-arm quilting studio for now… this blog will focus on long-arm quilting, plus any other projects I decide to work on.   I will still make quilts and handbags for sale, but instead of them being custom, they will most likely be samples from patterns that I am writing, or something I just felt like making.  It will take me a few weeks to adjust the website to reflect all these changes, but I think that will be worth it.  I will be adding a section with my quilts and handbags for sale; I just have to figure out how I want to list that here.

I have one more custom quilt project that I intend to finish very soon – it’s a wedding quilt that I’ve had for over a year, waiting on the various pieces to arrive from the client.  It needs embroidering, and with it being so close to the holidays, I doubt my embroidering buddy will humor me to get it done before the end of the year.  Still, if I can manage to get that one assembled before the end of the year I will count myself very fortunate indeed.

As for the long arming… as I continue to work my way through the list of quilts in my possession, I am starting to realize that it, too, is becoming a distraction.  I have 12 or 13 of my own projects waiting to be quilted, plus 14 customer quilts waiting to be done.  That’s quite a backlog for someone who is supposed to be writing patterns & finishing her own quilts.  I think that come next year, I will be narrowing my client list to only a few select people & limited quilting for charity.

That’s pretty heavy for a Wednesday morning… but I think I will start to feel better about it as time passes.  Well, back to the long arm for me!!