I may not have received scheduled lessons at AccuQuilt but I did have access to Janome, Babylock, and Bernina seing machines. A Sweet 16 and a Avante' Handi Quilter quilting machines, oh and EVERY SINGLE DIE AccuQuilt made or ever tested! you name it and it was there. I will however admit that although I was surrounded by tens of thousands of dollars in quilting supplies the real prize was the people. I was literally surrounded by people who loved to quilt and create and their passion was contagious.
On Feb 14th 2013 my incredible husband bought me my very first sewing machine. It was a Hancock Brother machine with a long table and more stitches then I will ever use. It came with all the goodies I would need to free motion quilt and although it was slow which led to HUGE stitches it helped me finish my first 27 quilts in 9 months.
At the time my husband and I were cutting cost by sharing one car. We still had our farm truck but the gas prices basically kept it in dry dock. Every day we would leave our house in Omaha at 6:30 and Casey would drop me off at AccuQuilt where I would quilt for an hour he would then come and get me after he was done at work in Louisville,NE. Typically around 7:30. Basically I was getting an hour before work, 40 min at lunch and 2.5 hours after work. I started building patterns for Island Batiks Quilted in Honor and with the help of AccuQuilt I started The Samuel Quilt Project which in less then a year has given quilts to 1200 people affected by natural disasters. Basically my whole life was wrapped up in quilting. This would have been a good time to join a 12 step program for quilting addicts.
On the September afternoon when I found my self baffled sitting in my car with out a job and fresh out of dry kleenex I had no idea what was going to come next. If you had told me that in less then 3 months I would be moving to Clarinda, IA and opening a quilt and yarn store I would have never believed you. But that is exactly what happened. It turned out quilting wasn't the only thing that was contagious at AccuQuilt. I had caught a bad case of American Dream Fever and the only cure was an opening day in mid December.
This is partially a story about a quilt shop, it is also partially a love story, and its also a story about the American Dream still being available to those who still want it bad enough. Do you have a dream? What are you doing to go get it ?