Quilting on the Side
Co-hosts Tori McElwain of HeyTori and Andi Stanfield of True Blue Quilts share real talk about what it takes to grow a successful quilting business while balancing full-time work, family life, and creative energy. Whether you're into quilt pattern design, longarm quilting, teaching workshops, or selling handmade products, you'll find practical tips and honest conversations here. We cover everything from digital marketing and course creation to time management and the mindset shifts needed to build a sustainable, fulfilling side hustle. This show is your go-to guide for running a profitable quilting business on the side - with encouragement, strategy, and plenty of real-life stories from the stitching trenches.
Episodes
Coaching can be a real shortcut or an expensive detour, and the difference often comes down to what you bring to it. In this episode, Tori and Andi share lessons from years of coaching programs, masterminds, and courses, including the ones that paid off and the ones that didn’t.
They talk about why most business systems are the same idea in different words, why it matters to choose a coach who understands...
Lynn Christiansen of Emerald Falls Quilts learned to quilt with a coworker, sewing a table runner in the school copy room. Years later, she left teaching behind to build a quilt business around what she loves most: teaching quilters.
In this episode, Tori talks with Lynn about how a wool applique class at her local quilt shop turned into a pattern business, why guilds are a strong place to start, and how the Wanderlu...
Video is one of the few places where your quilting business keeps working for you long after you hit publish. In this episode, Tori and Andi talk about why YouTube is such a strong fit for quilt pattern designers, teachers, longarm quilters, and shop owners, and why Andi wrote a book about it.
Andi shares why video builds trust in a way flat photos can’t, how a well-made tutorial, like a classic nine patch, can...
Andi sits down with Carolina Moore — pattern designer, notion inventor, author, and newly minted YouTube Silver Button recipient — for a wide-ranging conversation about what it really takes to build a sustainable quilting business over time. Carolina shares the story behind her ever-expanding product universe (including her brand-new laser cutting venture, Clear Cut Quilts), why she's stepping back from ...
Andi has big news—she's releasing Quilting on Video: Your Guide to Grow and Monetize on YouTube, and Tori puts her in the hot seat to talk all things video content.
After seven years and 18,000+ YouTube subscribers, Andi breaks down why YouTube isn't just another platform for quilters—it's one of the few places where your content actually keeps working years later. We talk about:
- Why video matters for ...
Join the free "Do You Have a Book in You?" Webinar here: https://selfpublishingincubator.com/bookclass
Meet Kaitlyn Fritsch, the technical editor behind dozens of published quilt patterns and books. In this episode, she walks through exactly what a tech editor does (and why your math is probably fine—it's the spelling that'll get you), how to know if your pattern should be a book, and how much it actually...
Season 7 Premiere: Big Changes, Fresh Start, and Industry Events You Can't Miss
Tori and Andi kick off Season 7 celebrating seven years of real talk about running a quilting business alongside everything else. But this is no ordinary season opener—both hosts are navigating major shifts in their businesses.
Tori's hitting a pivotal moment: her husband just retired from the military after 13 years of moving around...
Six seasons. Over a hundred episodes. Three years of real talk about building a quilting business on the side — and Tori and Andi are not done yet.
In this Season 6 finale, the co-hosts take a walk down memory lane through what turned out to be their longest season yet — 21 episodes packed with guests, trade show adventures, solo experiments, and more than a few lessons learned the hard way.
What happens when a tech editor, a marketing coach, and three quilt pattern designers and teachers walk into the h+h americas Trade show? These are five quilting business owners with wildly different game plans — and a lot of honest hindsight.
In this special panel episode, Tori and Andi sit down with three of the friends they spent the week with at h+h Americas in Chicago — Kaitlyn Fritsch of Fritsch in ...
h+h Americas is a huge fabric and fiber arts industry trade show. Andi and Tori spent the week in Chicago and met a bunch of amazing people! In this episode, Andi walks the show floor and asks a variety of attendees about their experience. Meet longarm quilters, pattern writers, tech editors and fabric desigers. We hope you enjoy this peek behind the scenes.
Did you hear that the Self-Publishing Incubator is op...
What if the best marketing strategy for your pattern business had nothing to do with Instagram? Brooke Stambersky of Brooke's Bitchin' Stitches started her entire quilting business the old-fashioned way - walking into quilt shops, showing up in person, and letting her passion do the talking. Just relationships, discipline, and a really good pixelated Michigan quilt.
In this episode, Tori sits down with Brooke Stamber...
Andi flies solo this episode to share why YouTube has been her go-to social media platform for the past two years — and why she thinks it should be on every quilting business owner's radar. From the nuts and bolts of monetization requirements to the surprising longevity of a single well-timed video, she breaks down what's actually working for her channel. She also gets real about viral content, keyword strateg...
What do you do when distributors keep saying no and social media isn't getting your patterns in front of the right people? In this solo episode, Tori shares the story of Joyce - a pattern designer and client who built a growing pattern business by going straight to quilt shops with smart research, personalized outreach, and a willingness to put the actual product in people's hands.
Tori walks through Joyce's step-by-...
What happens when the business you love physically can't come with you? In this episode, Andi sits down with Cindy Bader of Patterns on the Prairie to talk about building - and rebuilding - a quilting business around the realities of your life.
Cindy started quilting as a first-generation quilter on a $60 Walmart Singer that she had to spin the flywheel to start. Nearly two decades ago, worsening carpal tunnel pushed...
What actually goes into a media kit — and do you even need one? In this episode, Tori and Andi break down the nuts and bolts of building a media kit for your quilting business, from headshots and bios to class sample photos and social media handles. They walk through how your kit should look different depending on whether you're pitching a podcast, approaching a guild, or reaching out to a quilt shop — a...
What does it look like to build a quilting business almost by accident? In this episode, Tori and Andi sit down with Monika Henry of Penny Spool Quilts to talk about her journey from a six-year first quilt (cut with cardboard templates and scissors) to running a pattern design business, teaching an improv quilting workshop, and launching a Canadian quilt subscription box that took off faster than she expected.
Monika...
In this episode, Tori and Andi dig into a topic they've been hearing about from both sides - the relationship between pattern designers and quilt shops. Are they competitors? Partners? Somewhere in between?
They break down the real economics of pattern design (spoiler: a $12 retail pattern doesn't go far at wholesale or distributor pricing), why most designers can't rely on direct-to-consumer sales alone, and what it...
In this episode, Andi sits down with Kathryn LeBlanc of Dragonfly's Quilting Design Studio (and author Kathryn Mykel) to talk about what it really looks like to keep reinventing your creative business when the thing that's working stops working. Kathryn opened a brick-and-mortar quilt shop with no money, no inventory, and no business background - then closed it right before COVID hit.
She pivoted to Facebook Li...
Quilt Market is gone. After decades as the destination event for quilting industry professionals, the fall show has been canceled indefinitely, and Tori and Andi have thoughts.
In this episode, they pull back the curtain on what the end of Quilt Market might mean for your business and the quilting industry as a whole, why it may not be the bad news everyone's making it out to be, and what it could signal about where ...
In this episode of Quilting on the Side, Andi and Tori welcome back Theresa Benson - the AI Quilter for a fascinating conversation about how artificial intelligence is showing up in the quilting world.
Since her last appearance on the podcast, Theresa has been busy speaking at guilds, mentoring quilters, presenting on the big stage at QuiltCon, and researching some of the biggest questions people have about AI.
...
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