From Accidental Pattern Designer to Subscription Box Creator with Monika Henry

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 shares the behind-the-scenes reality of creating Quilt the North — a quarterly subscription box featuring a Canadian pattern designer, curated fabric, and locally sourced handmade items tied to each designer's region. She talks about the logistics she had to figure out on the fly (like the fact that you have to order print fabric six to eight months in advance), how Canada's political climate unexpectedly did her marketing for her, and why the connections she made at H&H Americas gave her the confidence to actually launch.

Tori and Andi also dig into what Monika calls "accidental" business moves — and reframe them as something more intentional: listening to your audience, following curiosity, and being willing to figure things out as you go. Monika also shares how working with a coach through Tori's DMMC program helped her step back from the middle of her business and see the bigger picture.

Whether you've been thinking about launching a product-based offering, adding a subscription model, or just need a reminder that you don't have to have it all figured out before you start, this conversation delivers.

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Connect with Monika 

Website: https://pennyspoolquilts.com 

See more about Quilt the North 

Instagram: @pennyspoolquilts 

Facebook: @pennyspoolquilts 

YouTube: @pennyspoolquilts 

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and guest introduction
02:00 Monica's first quilt and quilting journey
05:25 Turning hobby into business
09:13 Starting the Canadian quilt subscription box
12:37 Marketing and launching the subscription box
17:09 Listening to the audience and business insights
22:54 Favorite parts of the quilting and business experience
27:57 Where to find Monica online
28:45 Recent quilt project and color choices
29:16 Tools and notions Monica loves
31:04 Inspiring figures outside quilting
31:52 Challenges of running a business
32:57 Number of quilts in Monica’s sewing room
34:44 Exploring the Journey of Quilt the North
36:45 The Fearless Entrepreneurial Spirit

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Co-Hosts: 

Tori McElwain @heytori.tech & https://www.heytori.tech/ 

Andi Stanfield @truebluequilts &

Transcript

Andi (00:05.74)
Welcome to another episode of Quilting on the Side. Tori and I are excited to welcome our friend Monica from Penny Spool Quilts. Hello!

Monika Henry (00:17.91)
Hi, thanks for having me.

Andi (00:20.03)
Sure, and I'm gonna address the accent first of all because people will pick up that you don't have the same normal American accent that I do, so tell us where you're from.

Monika Henry (00:33.206)
I'm originally from Switzerland. So my mother tongue is German. So that's the accent. And now I live in Canada. So that's probably where the accent gets coloured in different from yours as well.

Andi (00:35.509)
nice!

Andi (00:45.582)
Sure, Yeah, yeah, but it's so wonderful that quilting can bring the whole world together.

Monika Henry (00:53.513)
It sure does.

Andi (00:55.546)
And we love to start out with our guests. Tell us about your first quilt and a little bit about your business.

Monika Henry (01:03.9)
My first quilt was a six-year adventure. I didn't actually know what a quilt was until I was about 18 because they weren't really a thing back in Switzerland, or at least not for me growing up. It turned out later on that there were quilters around, but they were kind of hiding in the woodwork. And I didn't meet my first quilt until I came to Canada on a trip and saw them and I was

fascinated. And then when I came back again, a couple of years later, my grandma saw that there was a patchwork course offered at the senior center where she normally goes. And apparently they didn't have a lower age limit. So I was 20 at the time. And so I packed up my mom's sewing machine and took that patchwork class and we learned how to make just a few basic blocks. And after that, I thought, well,

I know what I'm doing now and decided I was going to make myself a quilt. In the meantime, I had also been given a book that had a really nice quilt pattern in it that I liked. It's a double nine patch. So very simple, already leaning quite modern actually for a traditional book. And I decided I was going to make that and was going to make it for my twin bed, which I don't know what I did math-wise, but

It ended up being, it fits on our king size bed now. took me, well, it's, it's a nine patch or double nine patch. So there's all these little squares that go together in like rows of three. then, so back then I didn't have a ruler or a rotary cutter. So I cut everything out with a cardboard template pencil around it, and then scissors, all the individual squares and by about block number three, I was tired of it.

But I had cut everything ahead of time. then it took me about six years to complete the whole quilt with lots of space in between of where I wasn't working on it I was going through university at the time. So there was like thesis to work on and other projects and things that I didn't have time. But the final...

Monika Henry (03:27.773)
Push to finish it was actually because we were being moved to Singapore my husband's job transferred them there and We brought some stuff with us and a lot of it went to storage and I wasn't gonna put a half finished quilt in storage so I figured well I'll finish it and I can always do all the fancy quilting later. So I just did one big like diagonal Cross-hatch, I think it's like a it's probably like a 10 inch cross hatch

across the whole quilt and finished it up as best as I could. And yeah, then we went to Singapore and it's never gotten the fancy quilting treatment. It still only has the crosshatch. But we still like the quilt. We use it on the bed as a like cat hair guard for our bed. We don't sleep under it. It's not quite queen king size, but it's like

Tori McElwain (04:16.155)
Thank

Monika Henry (04:24.809)
the right size to cover the bed during the day so that the cat hair doesn't get in it. So yeah, so that was six years for the first quilt. And then after that, it was a little faster.

Tori McElwain (04:25.274)
the right side.

Andi (04:30.848)
Sounds wonderful! What an adventure!

Andi (04:36.974)
You discovered a rotary cutter?

Monika Henry (04:39.655)
Yeah, first of all, starters, I discovered the rotary cutter, I took some actual classes while I was in Singapore. There was a quilt shop there and I taught myself with that same book, taught myself a whole bunch of other quilt blocks and things and started to get the hang of how stuff works. And then, yeah, now it doesn't, takes a couple of weeks for a quilt these nowadays.

Tori McElwain (05:08.206)
How did you turn your hobby into a business?

Monika Henry (05:10.613)
Very accidentally. I'm a geographer and a high school teacher officially. So I don't have like an art degree or something. But when I was after we had moved back from Singapore to Switzerland, then we moved to Canada, because that's where my husband's actually from. We now live like five minute walk from his parents, actually. Once we moved here, I had

quilt shops around and everything and really got into quilting a lot more and ended up working at a quilt shop locally. And I've always been sort of doodling my own patterns and I started with patterns for like the first three, four quilts. And then I kind of went, I know what I'm doing. I can just use, what do call it? The paper with the cross lines on it. Graph paper, thank you.

Andi (06:05.442)
Yeah, the graph paper.

Monika Henry (06:09.621)
And so just used graph paper, pencil and drew up my patterns and I brought one of those doodles to work on over my lunch break at the shop. And a friend of mine who I was working with colleague, she said, you should submit that to make modern magazine. And I was thinking she was a little bit crazy for suggesting that because I wasn't the pattern designer. Like I was just the average quilter.

And she kept bugging me and like nudging me to do it. And then I finally sent it in and they actually published it. So then I had to learn to write patterns. And once I was writing patterns, I was kind like, well, you might as well, you know, keep doing that. And then it sort of it started as a pattern here and a pattern there. I had a couple more in Make Modern magazine. Sort of like once a year kind of thing. And then

Monika Henry (07:07.812)
2019, I stopped working there and decided that I was going to go basically full time with this whole pattern thing or almost full time. I was working part time in the family business to help out and then part time doing this and then kind of, yeah, took a deep dive or a nosedive of the deep end kind of.

Tori McElwain (07:35.238)
So how does your business look right now?

Monika Henry (07:37.642)
I'm very busy and sometimes a little scatterbrained. And that's when I text you and ask for advice for what do I do first? So no, it's currently I do patterns still occasionally for magazines, but mostly just publish them outright. I teach and lecture and I recently started a side quest of

doing a quilt subscription box, which has taken on a bit of a life of its own and is now making me busier than I expect it to be. So, but it's been a lot of fun for that one. So.

Andi (08:21.602)
Yeah, I'd love to hear more about that subscription box and how you got started with that idea.

Monika Henry (08:29.429)
Again, accidentally, I feel like my entire business is an accident, like a happy accident, but I never set out to do any of the things I end up doing, but I kind of fall into them. And then I realized, I can do this. This is fun. Let's keep it. The subscription box kind of came up in a Facebook group. Somebody was asking if there were any Canadian quilt pattern.

not quilt pattern, quilt subscription boxes that were project-based. And not just a fabric subscription, but like one that has a pattern and then the fabric to make the pattern and then a couple of other things with it sort of thing. Sorry, can I just? My nose is itching.

Tori McElwain (09:17.542)
Yeah.

Monika Henry (09:21.545)
Okay. Yeah, I'm back.

Andi (09:21.762)
This is the pause.

Tori McElwain (09:21.82)
you

Monika Henry (09:26.163)
Yeah, so somebody was asking about subscription boxes that were project-based and not a fabric subscription where you get some fabric every month, but not a project with it. So they wanted something that they could finish. And nobody seemed to know of anything available. Everything was US-based. And so it kind of seemed to, I think, percolate in the back of my head.

for a time and all of a sudden I realized, I noticed one time like driving through town, picking up a kid or dropping off a kid. I don't remember what I was doing, but all of a sudden I had like this spark of an idea, like, I could do that. And then the ideas went like down the rabbit hole I went. So I started thinking about how I could do this and what could be in it and what would be fun to organize and all that. So I followed the rabbit.

came up with the idea that this is...

basically based around a featured designer. So that would be a Canadian, that would be all Canadian because they wanted something Canadian. I might as well go full, full on Canadian. And so we're featuring it around, or we're basing it around a featured designer who provides the pattern for the, a project. Then we have fabric for it. And then the rest of the box is based around the location where

this designer lives. So either the city or the larger region depending on where they are. Sometimes they're quite rural, so then we expand a bit and sometimes it's like a big urban center, so then it's more city focused. yeah, so it's been fun and very successful, like a lot more successful than I expected. So I've scrambled a little bit at the start because I didn't expect it.

Monika Henry (11:33.417)
but it's been fun.

Tori McElwain (11:36.016)
How did you introduce it and get it off the ground?

Monika Henry (11:40.15)
I posted it in a couple of, well, first I quizzed all my quilty friends in Canada with what do you think of this? Would you take part in this? Do you have any more ideas like bouncing stuff around with them? And then once it was ready to actually launch, I more or less just posted in a few Facebook groups. And thanks to the current political climate and everything. Yeah, like

Politics kind of did the advertising for me, to be honest. I didn't have to do a whole lot, which I honestly am happy about because advertising and marketing is still not my strong suit. But yeah, I did. I set up a Instagram page and Facebook page for them and I have it's called Quilt the North and I have the domain quiltthenorth.ca. It points back to my website.

like to a landing page on my website, but it's got its own little home on my site. And basically I'm just kind of, yeah, using those for advertising. Like I don't even have an email, email list for them. I just use my own or my own like for Penis Bull Quilts, the emails for that. So.

Andi (13:00.855)
Yeah, that's...

Tori McElwain (13:01.018)
And by political climate, you meant that last year there was a huge surge in Canadian pride. Is that right? Yeah.

Monika Henry (13:07.945)
Yeah, it's basically once, yeah, once President Trump started, yeah, digging at Canada, but the 51st state and imposing tariffs and just generally that whole sort of we're no longer friends with Canada type stuff that got a lot of people's backs up and resulted in a lot of like, yeah, like you said, national pride sort of like,

Tori McElwain (13:16.092)
you on this week.

yes.

Monika Henry (13:38.166)
the saying at the time and still is, is elbows up. We're not gonna, we're not gonna let, let them, them, um, push us down sort of thing. So people are shopping Canadian a lot more. They're looking for where things are made and if they can, um, buy something that is from either made in Canada or, um, sold by someone in Canada sort of thing. If they

Tori McElwain (13:38.854)
Yeah.

Tori McElwain (14:00.252)
the camera.

Monika Henry (14:07.241)
don't have to order from the US. They prefer that. So it's all going in that direction.

Tori McElwain (14:15.1)
So I know that we also, me and you know each other for a few years and we were roommates at H &H and I'm wondering, did H &H help you at all with your box?

Monika Henry (14:20.873)
Mm-hmm.

Monika Henry (14:24.853)
Not so much with the box itself, like with the selling it or anything like that, but it helped with making some contacts with other Canadian businesses that were also at H &H. that was still before it launched. So I was just making connections more so with some suppliers and talking to them about, I have this idea, but you think would I be able to, well,

get a wholesale account with you, or would I be able to use your products in some ways, or what are your ordering options in case I end up using what you sell? Because at the time, I didn't really know yet what all the projects were going to be or any of that stuff. So it was more of a reconnaissance mission.

Tori McElwain (15:20.794)
Yeah, yeah, you're getting feedback. You were making connections. Yeah, that makes sense.

Monika Henry (15:24.221)
Yeah, and had quite a few people that I met were, well, not quite a few, pretty much everyone I talked to was very interested and thought it was a great idea. So that helped me feel better about launching it too. So that I thought I got the impression that I was doing something that might actually work.

Andi (15:46.904)
Yeah, congratulations. I'd love to hear those success stories. And as much as I dislike the political bickering that you mentioned, I am so glad that you were able to take that as a positive for your business. just because it's...

Monika Henry (15:49.781)
Thank you.

Monika Henry (16:08.724)
Mmm.

Andi (16:12.982)
It's a big world, we all need to get along. just, get so frustrated sometimes with...

Tori McElwain (16:17.044)
Well, what I'm hearing is that you got really good at listening to the things around you. So the people around you, the climate around you. And when you had this spark, it was like all these little bits and pieces were kind of pushing you in this direction. And then you started making it come together. So I don't hear like it's an accident. I hear more like you were listening and you followed your intuition. And like you said, you dive down the rabbit hole and you realized you could do it. And everyone was giving you that positive feedback.

Monika Henry (16:43.305)
Mm-hmm.

Tori McElwain (16:45.596)
And the more you heard it was a great idea, the more you dived into it. So I feel like that was like ultimate listening to your audience.

Monika Henry (16:53.449)
I suppose you could put it that way. I meant it more accident in the sense that I wasn't looking for something to do. It kind of like I fell into it in that sense. yeah, putting it together was definitely listening and figuring out what people actually wanted. yeah, getting it sort of launched at the right time as well. We actually launched for Canada Day last year.

Tori McElwain (16:59.164)
Mm-hmm.

Andi (17:14.018)
What has-

Andi (17:17.89)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tori McElwain (17:21.598)
perfect!

Andi (17:22.574)
Nice, nice, yeah. I just, think that Canadian theme is brilliant because I've heard the riches are in the niches and you know, anytime you can have just that one thing that really solidifies the theme and Canada's just such a big, beautiful country. You've got so much to dive into then for future boxes. So.

Monika Henry (17:37.429)
Thank

Monika Henry (17:49.907)
Mm-hmm.

Andi (17:51.79)
It's I saw on your website, it's a quarterly subscription. So how far out has your brainstorming gone? Is this going to be a 10 year project?

Monika Henry (17:55.187)
Yes. Yeah.

Monika Henry (18:04.661)
I have designers for up to the end of next year who have said that they would like to be part of it. definitely the, it's going to be a two and a half year project if nothing else. So, but yeah, we did, basically decided on quarterly because A, people want to be able to finish the project. And I felt that if it came to more often, they would

Tori McElwain (18:05.564)
We have to sign in.

Tori McElwain (18:17.084)
Please note, it's going to be a two and a half hour project.

Tori McElwain (18:23.146)
We can start mixing.

it.

Monika Henry (18:34.353)
I'd rather have it little less often and people having time to do it and also my own personal brain space and sanity. I don't think I could handle more than every three months.

Tori McElwain (18:52.796)
Yeah, because you're also doing mentioned patterns. Is there anything else you're doing for your business?

Monika Henry (18:55.923)
Yeah. Teaching. So there's those two sides and the box.

Tori McElwain (18:59.27)
you

Andi (19:05.272)
What have been the logistical struggles? Because I always hesitate to do anything kit or box oriented because I just, don't want to be responsible for all that inventory. So how have you managed that aspect of it?

Monika Henry (19:20.405)
Okay.

learning by doing really, I had no idea how to order fabric or what was involved in ordering fabric. that was the biggest, learning curve was the fabric. Cause the other things that are included are, local, from local small businesses. So I want to include like almost like a souvenir type thing, but not cheesy souvenirs. They're more like local handmade items that are sort of

somewhat specific to the area, that sort of thing. And all those local businesses have been awesome to work with despite me ordering quite a lot at once. But the fabric was, that was a learning curve because I had no idea how fabric ordering even works. Like the fact that for print collections, you have to order before it goes to print. And then you say how much you want and that's how much they end up printing. They're not printing.

more than that. So I, we ended up, I use North Cop fabrics mostly because that's just who we started with and they have a large diverse like offering type thing. But yeah, we've been using basics mostly because those are reorderable. And if I order 50 bolts of something and they don't have 50 bolts in stock, they can print more.

Tori McElwain (20:24.997)
I mean,

Tori McElwain (20:43.769)
and I'll come to your group.

Monika Henry (20:52.158)
or make more and send them a little later. And I still have everything I need, but the, yeah, like I had no idea that I had to order like six, eight months in advance or maybe some of some, or even like a year in advance. And I don't know yet what my September designer, for example, is going to need. So I'll be...

Figuring that out shortly, we're currently working with the June box and just sent out the March box. yeah, it's been interesting figuring that stuff out and getting like the behind the scenes peak too that I never realized before.

Tori McElwain (21:37.904)
What's your favorite part? I'd love to hear your favorite part.

Andi (21:37.91)
Yeah.

Monika Henry (21:41.139)
My favorite part is finding all the things to put in it. The pattern and the fabric is given by the designer, but the rest of it is all, I ask the designers for help because I often don't know their local area or what they're famous for or anything like that. So I'll ask them for tips or what to look for, or maybe they even know an artisan that I should work with. But it's that sort of like...

It's almost like packing Christmas gifts or picking out Christmas gifts. Like you're sort of trying to find the things that people are going to like. it's like, you can't wait for them to open the box and see their faces when they get it. So, and then I design a quilt block that goes in it that features something local as well. So that gives me my little hint of design time and playing around with that as well.

Andi (22:41.076)
It just sounds like a wonderful experience from start to finish with, like you said, the learning about different places and the creativity that you get and the joy and pulling in all the treats for people. just congratulations. Very, very well done.

Monika Henry (22:59.712)
Thank you.

Tori McElwain (23:01.894)
So what have you been doing with teaching?

Monika Henry (23:04.674)
that one's kind of run on autopilot for me. thanks to a few summits that I attended, people saw me or saw my lectures and have been reaching out to me. So I haven't really been advertising. I have a page on my website with all my classes on there, but, I've mainly been teaching, an improv class, which has been a lot of fun. it's called improv for planners.

because I am a planner and I used to struggle with improv anything because I just, yeah, I like to plan things. So I kind of, created a, I suppose you could call it a method or like a framework sort of for myself for making improvised quilts without actually doing all the really wonky chaotic improv and

then had some friends ask me, I need this. I'm like you, I'm a planner. This would be perfect. That kind of spiraled into teaching it as a workshop. And I've been teaching that for almost two years now, I think. And that's a lot of fun too, especially seeing people who are like, kind of, I'm gonna call it uptight, like myself at the beginning, sort of like, my God, I can't get out of my little box.

Tori McElwain (24:26.55)
Thank you.

Monika Henry (24:31.574)
And then by the end of the class, they're like throwing colors around and, no, let's try this or, no, I get it. I could do this with the next quilt or I could expand into that side of things. that's always the best to see.

Tori McElwain (24:50.01)
I that.

Andi (24:55.226)
And we mentioned that you had struggled a little bit with marketing and Tori has a great program that helps all of us with that. What have you found most helpful from the DMMC and where are you focusing your marketing efforts these days?

Monika Henry (25:03.253)
Okay.

Monika Henry (25:18.97)
the most helpful has been just someone to basically look at my business from the outside and sort of tease the various bits apart and help me figure out where, where to put my energy or what to focus on most, or I have a tendency to want to do all the things and

I still get to do most of the things, but I have a priorities list, or at least I did until this box came along and kind of upended everything. yeah, I never had a strategy. Now I feel like I have at least the semblance of one. I don't necessarily follow it all the time. That's a bit the problem. And I still

I still feel...

I don't know. It's the whole actual advertising that I would like to learn more about, like in terms of like, say, Facebook ads or that sort of thing. I'm pretty good using my email list and have learned a fair bit from the DMMC about that as well as also with like the landing pages and the funneling people through and where they go and all that. But.

The main thing that helped me really is just not being stuck in the middle of it all, but having eyes from the outside to sort it all out a little bit and like refocus it.

Tori McElwain (27:02.47)
And then that's a common theme in the DMMC is we have a lot of people with a lot of fingers in many pies. And that's one thing that they come for is just straightening everything out and figuring out exactly what to do so that, like you said, you have requests coming in on all pilot from, from summit. So understanding that joining a summit can alleviate a lot of backend work because you're getting a big influx at once rather than trying to constantly like.

Monika Henry (27:09.195)
Yeah.

Monika Henry (27:21.034)
Mm-hmm.

Tori McElwain (27:30.906)
let's say post on Instagram to try to get more guilds to contact you and that kind of stuff. So thank you for sharing that Monica. Thank you Andy for asking that question.

Monika Henry (27:33.994)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Andi (27:39.628)
Yeah, for sure. Before we go into our set of questions that we ask every guest, Monica, tell people where they can find you. What platforms are you on in your website?

Monika Henry (27:53.495)
My website is pennyspoolquilts.com and I'm pennyspoolquilts everywhere else, as in everywhere where I actually am. That's Facebook and Instagram. I do have a fledgling YouTube channel that has about, I think, four videos on it so far, but that's also pennyspoolquilts and on Pinterest as well under the same. And it's all always just one word, no underscores or anything.

Andi (28:23.054)
We'll definitely put those links in the show notes for people to check you out. So we like to ask guests about color and we are changing it up a bit and I want to know what colors you've used in your most recent quilt project.

Monika Henry (28:41.322)
The entire rainbow.

It's actually the one behind me. It's a scrappy quilt that has the whole rainbow color wheel on it.

Tori McElwain (28:54.789)
And if you're, if.

Andi (28:54.818)
Did you even black and brown when you say the entire rainbow?

Monika Henry (28:58.738)
No, that never includes black and brown. No, those are are colors I'm a little.

Andi (29:00.782)
Okay.

Monika Henry (29:08.106)
I suppose I struggle using those. Let's put it that way. It's not, they're not the first ones I turned to.

Tori McElwain (29:12.805)
Indeed.

Tori McElwain (29:16.666)
Yeah. Do you prefer yardage or pre-cuts?

Monika Henry (29:21.671)
Where do fat quarters fall?

Tori McElwain (29:23.644)
I think that's a pretty good

Monika Henry (29:25.238)
That's a pre-cut? Okay, in that case, pre-cuts. Yeah. I do buy some like half yards and that, if the shops don't offer smaller cuts. But if I can, I like to get just fat quarters. Because I tend to go more by color rather than print. So I buy like fillers for my color wall. And then I work off of that.

Andi (29:54.082)
Very nice. And I love to just go collect fat quarters from shops. That's always a fun souvenir to take with me. Tell us about your favorite tool or notion, whether that is in your quilting experience or from the business side.

Tori McElwain (29:54.128)
And many of your quilts are.

Monika Henry (29:58.549)
Mm-hmm.

Monika Henry (30:14.222)
that one's a hard one. I was thinking about that one actually before we hopped on here and I'm a very minimalist quilter when it comes to tools. Like I have my favorite ruler or two and I have a rotary cutter and that's about it. Like they can do almost anything I need. but I did very like spur of the moment by a, Thread Snips from

LDH scissors at a show once. And that's been my best sort of unplanned investment, I think, because, yeah, they're beside the sewing machine now and they get used anytime I sew, I'm snipping something with them. So and they're very nice to hold.

Andi (31:03.192)
Great recommendation. Thank you.

Monika Henry (31:06.164)
And they're also a Canadian company.

Tori McElwain (31:06.588)
Who is inspiring you right now? And it doesn't have to be in the quilting industry.

Andi (31:07.725)
Hahaha

Monika Henry (31:15.89)
inspiring mostly Monty Don actually on Instagram. He's a British gardener and I wish I had a garden like his. I mostly do vegetables. He mostly does ornamental. My ornamental garden is yeah, I would love for my flower garden to look more like his.

Andi (31:44.833)
It's always nice.

Monika Henry (31:44.916)
And just I like looking at the pictures.

Andi (31:47.788)
Yeah, yeah, and it's always nice to have that inspiration from outside the world bringing in the nature aspect too is good for our mental health. So thank you for that recommendation. What is your favorite part of running a business?

Tori McElwain (31:47.964)
Thank

Monika Henry (31:55.349)
Mm-hmm.

Monika Henry (32:09.736)
of the actual running the business? I don't think there's anything favorite about that.

Andi (32:15.694)
you

Monika Henry (32:18.422)
No, I'm not a huge fan of the actual running of the business. I'm a fan of doing the things I get to do in my business, like the teaching or the pattern designing and seeing people make stuff with my patterns that I never thought of them doing or people opening their Quilt the North boxes and posting reviews about how happy they are with what's in it. But the actual business end of things?

is not my favorite part now.

Andi (32:50.53)
Yeah, I think a lot of creatives struggle with that, but we hope that this podcast community can provide some relief from some of that drudgery. And it is so, so fascinating, eye-opening, educational, inspirational to hear your story, Monica. So thank you for sharing so much.

Tori McElwain (32:55.676)
you

Monika Henry (33:02.912)
Yeah.

Tori McElwain (33:03.676)
No!

Monika Henry (33:10.582)
Thank you.

Tori McElwain (33:10.8)
Thank you.

Monika Henry (33:14.742)
Well, thank you.

Tori McElwain (33:15.054)
And our last question is how many quilts do you have in the room with you right now?

Monika Henry (33:19.402)
I counted those before I hopped on. Because I'm sitting in the sewing room. And I think there's a good 40 quilts plus a bunch of, because I have a whole stack of them that I take to trunk shows and like samples from making patterns like the covers. So they're all in here with me. And then there's like some pillows and some totes and a couple of like unfinished quilt tops. So.

There's probably altogether like 50 or 60 quilted things in here.

Tori McElwain (33:54.374)
That sounds beautiful.

Monika Henry (33:55.542)
I actually need a new cabinet. That's the next plan for this room is to store my quilts a little bit better because they're in one stack on top of a dresser type thing. And if I need any of the lower quilts, I have to take the whole stack down to get to them and then pile them all back up and hope they don't fall over. So it needs organizing.

Andi (34:22.402)
I saw an amazing, like behind the scenes with a quilter, this is years ago, but they had everything on like curtain rods and hanging. And so they were able to, and it didn't take up very much space, but they were able to, you know, just have racks and racks. I need the museum space to hang everything, you know, those big, wide racks that you can open.

Monika Henry (34:40.586)
Mm-hmm.

Monika Henry (34:48.895)
Yeah.

Andi (34:52.78)
Now that's what-

Monika Henry (34:53.03)
Hanging would be nice because then you wouldn't get all the folds.

Andi (34:56.45)
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it has been a pleasure speaking with you today, Monica. Thanks so much for joining us.

Monika Henry (35:06.356)
Well, thank you for having me.