SnuggleBugStitching – Meet My Team

2023 is underway, another new year. My first finish of the year was a t-shirt quilt. If you follow me on instagram, you won’t be surprised that a t-shirt quilt is the first thing I made this year. This is a significant year for me. It’s the first time I’ve started the year running my quilt business full time. I actually started doing SnuggleBugStitching full time during the last quarter of 2022. It’s been great! My quilt orders started to take off last year, and I have plans to bring you more patterns too. Since I’ve been doing this for a little over three months now, I think it’s time I introduce my “team”. Just so we’re clear, I don’t have staff. My “team” is made up of family members who get roped in to helping me here and there.

Everyone on my “team” is important. So, I’ll just list everyone by age, oldest to youngest.

Me – Sarah

So, I am the oldest one on this team by three weeks. If Mr. SnuggleBugStitching were to actually read this AND comment, he’d say that it’s technically three weeks and 1 day. He likes to point out that I’m older than him. BUT, we were born in the same month AND graduated high school the same year. Oh, and since he’s not likely to read this, I’ll go ahead and say that everyone who knows us thinks I look younger than him.

That’s me holding one of the cover quilts for my Pumpkins ‘N Patches pattern. I’m the owner, CEO, director, creator… of SnuggleBugStitching.

For the quilts: I choose the fabric, cut the pieces, sew the quilt tops, piece the backings, baste the quilts, quilt the quilts, label the quilts, bind the quilts… Anything that involves creating the quilts, I did it.

For the blog: I write the blog and make any edits to the blog. The projects I photograph for tutorials are my projects. I take most of the pictures too, but Mr. SnuggleBugStitching is better at it. I can’t take complete credit for the blog though. It turns out that I’m not a natural at putting a blog together. There may have been some crying while Mr. SnuggleBugStitching helped me figure out what to do.

For the patterns: I design them, draw the diagrams, write the patterns, and make the cover quilts. Mr. SnuggleBugStitching does deserve some credit for the patterns though. I’ll get to that in his section.

For the quilt orders: I’m the one who responds when you send a message to my Etsy Shop. I make your quilts, pack them, and take them to the post office.

Mr. SnuggleBugStitching

Those are his feet in that picture. They actually make it onto the blog a lot. I feel like he isn’t nearly as excited by this as he should be. That’s the back of a reversible quilt I made a while ago. This brings me to one of Mr. SnuggleBugStitching’s jobs on my “team”. He is my best quilt holder. With the longest arms of anyone on the team, he gets to hold the quilts pretty often. He doesn’t care for this job and whines about it, but he’s still the best at it. He is also one of the picture takers, definitely better at it than me, but most of the time he isn’t cooperative for that either.

Despite not being the most willing quilt holder and photographer, he is a valuable member of my “team”. As mentioned earlier, he helped me figure out how to design the blog.

He also helped a lot when I first starting writing patterns. For some reason, I decided to use drafting software to draw the diagrams in my patterns. This is pretty funny because I had ZERO prior experience with drafting software. He’s an aerospace engineer, so he does know how to use the drafting software I drew my diagrams with. In fact, he sat beside me while I was drawing the diagrams. Every time I started crying because I didn’t know how to do what I needed to do, he’s the one who showed me how.

His engineer skills come in handy a lot for SnuggleBugStitching. I feel like he would make an excellent fabric cutter. As an engineer, he would probably be great at cutting accurate pieces. I’ve offered him a position cutting the quilt pieces, but he has repeatedly turned me down. He keeps saying something about already having a job.

I tease that he pouts about holding quilts and taking pictures, but he’s super supportive. He actually MADE me a custom sewing cabinet with a side table that makes a great cutting space and supports the weight of the quilts while I’m free motion quilting. When I decided I needed to paint some peg board to hang my tools and thread on, he’s the one who framed it and mounted it on the wall for me. He’s the best.

My Daughter

She’s a teenager, so she doesn’t really want to do anything, but she does do a good job. She’s a pretty good quilt holder, especially since the photograph doesn’t capture her complaining about not wanting to hold the quilt. She’s also a decent photographer and helps me with making videos.

When I name patterns, she always helps me with that too. I almost named my “Dublin Fancy” pattern, “Jelly Cubes” instead. She’s the one who pointed out that the cover quilt “isn’t very jelly.” I’m not sure what “very jelly” looks like, but apparently she knows and that wasn’t it. When I asked Mr. SnuggleBugStitching for his vote, he went a different direction. Apparently he thought “I Don’t Care” was a better name for the pattern.

My Son

This is THE snugglebug that I named my shop after. He made a name for himself in the company early on as the least whiney quilt holder. He was pretty young when I first started attempting to sell quilts, so he was always eager to help. Unfortunately, he was too small to hold up most of them.

I did allow him to try his hand at photography and videography. I’ve had to fire him a couple times though because he isn’t the best at being still. As a super hyper little boy, being still isn’t his strength. Luckily Instagram allows you to turn down the video sound so that me telling him to stop jumping around doesn’t make it into the reels. He has gotten some good video without even being asked. He decided this quilt top looked like a flying carpet and decided to take a video while he was taking pictures.

His favorite job is helping me pick out fabric. He has not interest in fabric, prints, or colors, but he still loves helping pick fabric. He had to tag along with me at the fabric store one day. When he got bored, he took the swatch I was trying to match and proceeded straight to the perfect background fabric. He then decided he should earn Robux anytime I sell a quilt containing fabric he picked. He’s a little businessman. I think this may be a valuable asset to SnuggleBugStitching at some point.

Cleo

Cleo is our fur baby. She loves quilts, but she’s not allowed in the sewing room, and she only gets to play with the two I keep in the living room. She gets really excited when I take outside quilt shots. She enjoys photobombing my quilts and making it onto my instagram from time to time. She is hands down my best quilt model. Fun fact: I didn’t even know she was in that shot until after it was taken. Mr. SnuggleBugStitching and I were holding that cover top for my Sarah Elizabeth Quilt Pattern while my daughter took that photo. So, Cleo sat down and gazed admiringly at that quilt top without being prompted. You gotta love her initiative. Yes, this was a shameless effort to talk about my super cute doggie.

That’s all I’ve got for today

As always, thank you for taking the time to read my blog!

I hope you enjoyed it.

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Happy quilting!