Mosaic Applique and the Pivot That Travels with You with Cindy Bader

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 her out of a desk job and into a computerized longarm business she ran from home while raising three kids. Then COVID opened the door to snowbirding - and she hit a new wall: you can't exactly pack up a twelve-foot longarm frame and take it to Texas.

So she pivoted again. Inspired by a 2:00 a.m. idea, Cindy started designing what she calls mosaic applique - fusible applique patterns with small gaps between the pieces, pre-reversed templates, color-sorted layouts, and a numbered reference page so customers can build each design from the center out like a puzzle. She recently added SVG files for cutting machines and uses a hotfix adhesive that stays permanent through washing, so there's no stitching around every little piece.

If you've ever felt boxed in by the physical or seasonal limits of your current quilting business, this conversation is a reminder that the constraint often points directly at your next move.

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Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Cindy’s Background
02:20 Cindy’s First Quilt and Early Sewing Memories
03:17 Transition from Hobbyist to Business Owner
05:47 Starting a Business During Carpal Tunnel Challenges
08:35 Discovering Quilt Pattern Design and Expanding Horizons
10:32 Introduction to Mosaic Applique Patterns
12:54 Design Process and Customer Pain Points
14:31 Innovative Application Techniques and Tools
15:30 Teaching and Sharing Patterns in Person and Online
16:42 Marketing Strategies and Word of Mouth
17:35 Family Support and Tech Skills in Business
21:41 Upcoming Events and New Pattern Releases
22:16 Where to Find Cindy and Her Patterns
23:03 Rapid Fire: Favorite Quilt Colors and Pattern Ideas
33:01 Closing Remarks and Thanks

Connect with Cindy:

• Website: https://patternsontheprairie.com
• Instagram: @patternsontheprairie
• Facebook: @patternsontheprairie
• YouTube: @patternsontheprairie

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Co-Hosts:

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

Andi Stanfield @truebluequilts & https://truebluequilts.com/ 

Transcript

Andi (00:00.29)
Welcome to another episode of Quilting on the Side. I'm Andi and unfortunately my co-host Tori can't be with us today, but we are delighted to have Cindy Bader of Patterns on the Prairie with us today. Hi Cindy!

Cindy (00:17.922)
Thank you so much for having me to this show.

Andi (00:19.566)
Of course, where are you joining us from?

Cindy (00:23.672)
from Marshall, Minnesota, which is southwest Minnesota.

Andi (00:26.784)
Okay, so definitely that's where the prairie comes from, because I remember from my little house on the prairie that's Laura Ingalls Wilder hometown.

Cindy (00:36.926)
Yep, it's not far from here. I fended a pageant.

Andi (00:39.586)
Fun. Fun, fun. So tell us about your very first quilt and we'll hear your story from there.

Cindy (00:50.062)
Yeah, so um, my very first quilt was way back when I was back in school in middle school, we still had home ec. So we made pillows back then. And I remember learning how to sew and my home ec teacher I remember that she was pregnant at the time and I thought well if I can make a pillow I can make a quilt I had a very candid attitude. Like that's like I can do anything. So I went and her a little baby blanket at the same time I made myself a little baby blanket.

And I actually still have it, which is funny. I guess I might do my first one, but I didn't follow a pattern like that. So the first year I got married, I actually bought a sewing machine and made my first actual quilt from following a pattern. And back then though, with the template, the cardboard templates, you had to cut out, you know, trace and cut them out. So that was over 30 years ago is when I my first actual, I call it my first quilt was when I first made my

following an actual pattern with the sewing machine and everything. So yeah, I've been quilting for a long time, but I'm actually a first generation quilter in my family and my husband's family, none of were quilters. My mom was a big crafter, so she grew up doing all different things. She was always seeking classes to learn something new. So I remember her doing rose mollying and stained glass and just all different crafts. And she used to make clothes for us when we were little. So that was my first, I guess, introduction to sewing.

never made quilts, but she did curtains and sewed our clothes. And I remember she had old Singer sewing machine, and you had to kind of spin it to get the needle going. first press on the presser foot and go really fast. But if you spun the flywheel, it would kind of go more smoothly. So that was my job to help her. I'd sit on the counter next to her and she'd say, okay, and I'd give it a little spin on the flywheel and then it would kind of go.

And then every time she stopped to readjust, she said, okay, and I give a little spin, you know, and I grew up thinking that's how all sewing machines were. So my first sewing machine 30 years ago was just a really cheap, I got a singer because my mom had a singer. That's what I knew. I got that Walmart like $60. And it was the same way. I had to get a spin to get it going. And that that's just how it was, you know, and so I was doing my thing sewing. And I don't know how long I've been sewing maybe three, four years. And

Cindy (03:12.386)
I went to a friend's house, we're making some baby blankets and I sat down at her machine and I went to give it a spin and it just started, I pushed on the pedal and just went and like, what? It just went, you don't have to spin the wheel. And so after that, got machine envy and I started saving for my next sewing machine that would actually go when I pushed on the pedal. yeah, it took me about two years to save up for a little better machine.

Sure. end, but still something that would actually go and then needle up, needle down, which I thought was just revolutionary.

Andi (03:46.132)
Yeah, yeah, all these fancy things, you know, people with knee lifts and all the special things. No, that's such an interesting story about how your impressions are generated from those early experiences. That's fabulous. So as the years went by, when did you start to have the idea to make money from your craft and how did that business building start?

Cindy (04:17.486)
So still early on in my journey, can't remember, I was probably maybe 20 years ago, I remember watching a quilting show and they had a long arm on there and I'd never heard of a long arm machine before. And I remember thinking, maybe someday when I retire, I can get one of those, because that'd be really fun to have a long arm and actually do my own quilting on it. And then probably about 15 years ago or so, or maybe a little more than that, I started getting carpal tunnel in my hand.

And I worked at a desk job, a lot of computer work, and it was getting so bad that I was getting like numbness on my arm and losing strength in my hand and everything. So I thought I need to pivot and do something different. And I thought, you know, maybe I don't need to wait till retirement to get a long arm. Maybe I get one now and started a business from home. that was, oh, I think about 17 years ago, I got a long arm and made that my full-time job.

Well, actually part-time, kids at home. So I've got three kids now. They're all older. They're in their late 20s or mid to late 20s. And I have a grand, let's say a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law and a little grandson, first grandson. So now I'm an empty nester, but at the time I was working and so I got the long arm and as a computerized one, so it didn't have to use my hands very much. So I kind of built that into a business.

So that was 17 years ago. And then it was just about, well, COVID hit. And I remember growing up, my parents, my grandparents were snowbirds and they used to go for those not familiar with the term, people in the Midwest, maybe all across the Northern United States, I'm not sure, but for sure in the Midwest, they like to go somewhere warmer in the winter to get away and they call them snowbirds. So my grandparents were snowbirds in Texas.

And I remember when I got married, told my husband, someday I want to be a snowbird. When we retire, I want to be a snowbird. Born and raised here in Minnesota, but I just never got used to the cold. So when COVID hit, my husband is a computer programmer and his job got to be moved online, working remote. And so we thought, well, why not start now? So we started just a few weeks at a time going down.

Cindy (06:40.354)
We would start in Texas. We've been to Arizona and we've been trying different places, but it was hard to get away from my long arm because you can't take a long arm with you. It's a big 12 foot frame and you can't travel with a long arm. So I started thinking, okay, what could I do that might be, I could take with me on the road. And I remember in early 2022, I got an email from Shannon Brinkley.

saying I have this free online class and it's how to expand your business. At the time I was thinking, okay, I have a long arm business and I wasn't really looking to expand it because I was plenty busy. But I thought, you know, maybe someday down the road I'll want to and I'll just, you know, see what she has to say. And she was really promoting quilt pattern design at the time because I still remember she said that with some businesses like long arming or making quilts that you're selling, she said the busier you are,

the busier you are. So the more business you get, the more hours you're working basically. Whereas in quilt pattern design, could, once you designed the pattern, you can just be selling it and it's not taking up necessarily more time. And I thought, well, that's something I could take on the road with me too, but I still wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. didn't know my mind wrapped around, you know, I thought if I did do something like that, I want it to be something maybe a little bit unique, a little something different. but then it wasn't long after that. I don't know.

for six months or so after that. remember, I don't know, I don't know about you, but when I'm sleeping at night, things going through my head and I got the idea of this mosaic applique. So those are the patterns I decided to start designing. Mosaic applique, it's like fusible, it's fusible applique, but instead of stacking the pieces and layering them on top of each other, like collage, quilting, you do a lot of layering of the little pieces. Here there's a little gap between the pieces.

And sometimes it's a small gap or a big gap, but just having a gap between the pieces. Yeah. So that's kind of the style. So I decided to get into designing that so I could take it on the road with me and do some teaching and speaking and just kind of doing it from the road.

Andi (08:46.414)
Yeah, that's great. And for our folks on YouTube, you can see a sample of Cindy's beautiful mosaic application. She's got a gorgeous zebra there behind her. So tell us a little bit more about those patterns and kind of the line that you've developed and how they've been received.

Cindy (09:09.262)
It got over actually really well, really well. I've been kind of surprised actually at shows. I didn't know how they would sell when I go to quilt shows, but because they are kind of different or unique, it kind of stops people. walk by and they're walking by the different booths and they kind of stop and then they kind of come into the booth and looked at my different patterns. So it's a, they're a little bit unique in that the templates.

They're full sized, but they're already reversed. And a lot of people don't reverse their patterns. So the people really like that. And also I've already taken the time to arrange the applique shapes on a page by color. So they're eight and a half pages. can, if you get a PDF, you can print it off on regular eight and a half by 11 printer paper. But also they're arranged that the whole page will be the same color fabric. So normally when you have applique shapes, you'll trace the shape.

you'll kind of rough cut around it and then you'll iron your fusible piece on your fabric and you'll kind of layer a lot of different, you know, arrange a lot of pieces on your fabric. And then you cut it out on the line. So you're cutting around it twice. For mine, because it's already arranged by color, you just iron, you trace your patterns on your fusible. You'll iron the whole page onto your fabric and then you cut it out.

So it saves a cutting step. It's half the work because you only cut once. And then it also offer pre-printed fusible so you don't have to the tracing. You can just buy the, get the hot fix sheets, iron them on your fabric and then start cutting right away. And I just, just this last month came out with a SVG files. So if you have a scanning cut or a cricket or a silhouette, you can use these files and it will cut the shapes for you. So there's no tracing or cutting.

I'll cut the shapes for you because a lot people were asking if I had pre-cuts. You know, the shapes are already pre-cut out. And I looked into it and it was just, it'd be cost prohibitive and very expensive to have someone cut out all the shapes for me and package them. So this way people can do it themselves if they want. And then all they have to do is take all those little pieces and arrange them on the background. And how my patterns work is once they have the pieces all cut out, there's, you can write a number on the back of each piece.

Cindy (11:27.938)
and I have a page is called a reference page and they'll look at the reference page. They'll start in the middle. There'll be a little asterisk in the middle of the pattern. They'll lay that piece down first and then they build from the center out. So I tell people it's like doing a puzzle, but you have all the pieces numbered and you have the answer key. You like doing puzzles. You'll like doing this a lot. Just kind of arrange them on the, you know, arrange them on your background, how you like it. You peel off the backing and you iron it down and you're done.

Andi (11:45.166)
Yeah

Andi (11:55.416)
Yeah, wow, you have really looked at the pain points of customers and quilters with applique and just really made that a smooth process. So I can see why the patterns are becoming so popular because they really do, you know, we're taught as business owners to look for the pain points and you've identified those, the ease of.

Arranging the pieces because I know I know exactly what you're talking about in terms of finding a pattern then you have to cut the shape out and you know arrange it on the fabric and you've done all that in your patterns. So, so I think that's it.

Cindy (12:35.56)
window so you can reverse the image yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And I found a product. am, I guess my target audience is beginning. Maybe there's a lot out there who have never even heard of applique before or a usable applique. So I'm really kind of targeting the beginner. And I know that it can be daunting to get it all done and then have to sew around all the pieces to hold them down too. And I was introduced to a product called Hotfix Adhesive.

It's a newer product on the market, but it's the only one that I know of. It's permanent even in the wash. So that means once you iron the pieces down, you're done. You don't have to sew around all the pieces, but it is lightweight and flexible. So you can do it like an all over. Most of my do it all over quilting pattern. I just pulled over the whole thing and it won't come up your needle, but then you don't have to sew around all those stinking little pieces when you're done. It saves a ton of time.

Andi (13:32.334)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. One of my only applique projects early on in my quilt career had about 85 leaves, you know, on a vine that I had to, you know, wait for the machine to buttonhole around every single one of them. Yeah, that was one of the reasons I don't do much applique. Find it very tedious, no.

Cindy (13:54.306)
You me out too. Right.

Andi (13:56.31)
Yeah, yeah, so,

You've got your patterns for sale, but you also mentioned teaching as a snowbird. Tell us a little bit about that process.

Cindy (14:08.814)
So I started out three years ago when I started doing, well after COVID I guess, teaching at my local quilt shop. And I started with just beginning, quilting, and mostly beginning techniques. Beginning paper piecing, applique, I tied a block of the month one year. Advanced beginner classes, I to take my initial beginning class, know, how to use a rotary cutter, know, the basics, then they go on and make like a small.

easy lap quilt. So I started doing that. And then when I started with my patterns coming out, I got into more teaching with my teaching my patterns at different quilt shops and quilt guilds. So that's what I focus on more now is just teaching my applique pattern. So I also speak at guilds. So a guild might have me to speak and then I might next day teach a class. So yeah.

Andi (15:03.352)
So are you relying on word of mouth or are you reaching out to guilds and shops? How are you focusing your marketing efforts?

Cindy (15:17.806)
So for the quilt or for the guilds, so far it's been word of mouth. They usually see me at a quilt show and they'll say, can you come speak at my guild? And I've been doing shows in like South Dakota and a few places in Minnesota. I only do like two or three a year, but they're spread out enough that they'll come and find me and then ask me to come to their guilds. They teach at different quilt shows and that's how they hear about me word of mouth. I had planned to reach out to different people.

and send out like a letter maybe to guilds around Minnesota. But I've been busy enough that I haven't even gotten around to doing that.

Andi (15:54.07)
Yeah, nice problem to have, so good. It sounds like you didn't have any entrepreneurial background or anything, so besides Shannon Brinkley's class, where have you found your business knowledge?

Cindy (16:13.144)
So actually I have a very entrepreneurial family. My dad, he has done, well, he was a teacher initially and then he was a general contractor in the summer. So he worked for himself and he has several apartments, I guess. And he always had, he and my mom both had a very candid attitude. like, do anything you want. So both my brother and my sister are entrepreneurs. have their own businesses, nieces and nephews. so, and my daughter just started

book editing business on her own. But I have taken last year when I went to try to teach online classes. I didn't know where to start for teaching online. So I did take Tori's workshop unleashed class. And then after her class, I took Academy for Virtual Teaching. I joined with Lyric Montgomery and learned all about the lighting and the sound and the zoom and

and all the background stuff. So I really had thought this last year, I really focused on learning online teaching, because I had thought, I really love teaching in person, but I thought I could reach more people teaching online. So I offered an online class with each of my patterns. a few people signed up and taught some online classes, but for some of the classes they didn't fill.

I thought, you know, I'm just going to record the class anyway. And I turned them into on-demand classes and I found, I don't know, I didn't enjoy, once I got going in the class, I really liked the on-demand, not talking with the people, but it was hard to see what they were doing. So it's very, so different from being in person where I could actually be there physically helping them or if they need a little help with the cutting or arranging pieces to see what they're doing. And so I find I enjoy.

in person a lot more than teaching online live. So it wasn't, I didn't like it as much as I thought I guess. And just the technical part of it, I'm always a little stressed like are they gonna be able get on and am I gonna be able get on? I gonna have any troubles with the tech part of it? And I find I'm very good with tech if it works. If anything goes wrong, I'm completely blind. I'm just no clue.

Cindy (18:35.98)
So I'm very, very thankful that my husband's very techie and he figures out all my little problems. But if I have a zoom call during the day and he's gone, like, I don't know what to And thankfully my kids are all very techie. So they've all gotten very involved. They've been so supportive. My daughter designed and keeps up my website. Nice. My older son, he's a computer techie guy too. And initially he was helping me with editing some photos when I needed some photos for the covers.

my patterns and for my website. Now I learned how to do it myself in Canva, which has been amazing. Canva's great. My youngest son got me turned on to CapCut. He's tried to show me how to use Illustrator and that was just so over my head. But thankfully Canva, I can do most of the stuff I want to in Canva. But he turned me on to CapCut and got me going for video editing. So it's been kind of a family.

You know, my kids helped me out a lot. My husband's been amazing for supporting me and encouraging me. My husband goes to the quilt shows with me. So it's funny that he knew nothing about quilting, but before a big quilt show, I had some kits I was going to be making up and I wanted to make samples with the actual fabric. Cause I know people like to see it on the wall and they want that exact, you know, that fabric. Right. And so I was out of time. I was working on other things, packing up kits. And so my husband actually,

cut out some of the different patterns for me. And so he made a few of my samples and then just from being in the booth with me, hearing me repeat myself over and over again, he can now answer a lot of the questions. So that's great. He's gotten very good, very supportive. So yeah.

Andi (20:24.455)
Yeah, that's terrific. That's terrific. So what do you have coming up later in 2026?

Cindy (20:32.366)
I've got some quilt shows, I'm going to be speaking at some different guilds. I'm hoping to do another Quilters Paradise coming up here, early summer here. This pattern is actually coming out, coming up, actually I just released it this week. Oh good. Two days ago.

Andi (20:52.279)
Yeah, so it'll be pretty fresh when this episode airs. And where can people find you?

Cindy (20:59.47)
They can find me at patterns on the prairie.com is my website or I'm on Facebook or Instagram at patterns on the prairie. I'm just starting to get my YouTube channel up and going. That's my next step is I it's going and I have some videos out there, but I'm planning to really do a lot more recording of just very basic, how to videos, know, rotary cutting and just some of the basic quilting and then basic applique type things.

Andi (21:27.128)
Good, good. We will definitely put all those links out there so people can get to know Cindy and her wonderful mosaic applique. Let's go into the rapid fire questions that we ask all our guests. What, and I'm wondering if my guess is gonna be correct, but what colors did you use in your latest quilt?

Cindy (21:52.694)
I black. Which is weird because you know I've listened to your podcast from the beginning. I've listened to every single episode and when they do rapid fire the first thing that comes to mind is what color I don't like to use is black. I hear a quote that has just black and grays in it. But yeah it's just black and grays.

Andi (22:04.535)
yeah!

Andi (22:14.4)
One thing diverting from the rapid fire because your comment about color and all your animals, I was wondering where you get your pattern ideas. Are you doing any market research? Are you trying to work within a theme? How are you developing those different pattern ideas?

Cindy (22:36.696)
So the very first ones I came out with, the very first four, I had a sea turtle and then sea oars. I like the ocean. I went to school for biology and I wanted to be a marine biologist. So that was like, I just liked it. And then I had a elephant and a giraffe. And those were because I knew that baby, so the patterns I started with were all 48 by 48, which I thought would be a well, large wall hanging, but also a good baby size.

And I know a lot of nurseries have kind of a safari theme to them. And so those were more focused on thinking, okay, maybe kind of more baby nursery focused on that. So I started growing that collection. So instead of adding a tiger and now the zebra is the fourth one in that collection. So when I initially started, I thought I'd have four in each collection. Like I have an underwater one, and then the safari, and then I have a butterfly, which I was going to do like a

fluttering bike clutch, have a butterfly and a dragonfly. And then I have in the garden was a big giant Dahlia. And I was going to build on each of those and kind of have put four together to make a queen size quilt. But after I had designed, I mean, I shouldn't figure this out sooner. I had designed, I don't know, like think eight of them. And I thought I should come up with a queen size pattern that they could get just to put all four together. Just a free pattern that just how to assemble form together.

And I laid them on my bed and they were way too big. You can't fit four Monta Queens eyes beds. Down to the floor, like, Now I'm like, okay, forget it. I don't need to get four in each collection because you can't put four together anyway. can put two on a bed and then fill it out. So I kind went away with the collection thing. So the ones I'm coming up with more now, I'm starting to.

Andi (24:08.61)
Don't.

So...

Andi (24:20.664)
Yeah.

Cindy (24:28.586)
at my quilt shows, I have a clipboard and I say, what should I design next? And so I've gotten so many ideas, so many ideas. And this actually, when I was in Florida, I just got back from being in Florida or snowboarding seven weeks now, we skip a good chunk of the winter. And my focus down there was gonna be on designing patterns.

Andi (24:32.216)
Nice.

Cindy (24:54.722)
And I was absolutely able to design, not initially design, like get that sketch for 18 different patterns. Now, a lot of those, I'm gonna be putting together like three of them together, two smaller ones and the taller one. I'm putting like three together into a quilt. So I have a series of those coming out. Hopefully this next year. So I've had my initial designs done. for me, the inspiration comes a lot from, like I had to be able to.

clearly see it before I can draw it. So I might get inspiration from, it could be a mosaic tile, it could be a stencil, it could be a photograph, a tattoo, anything, anywhere I see something that's like, oh, that'd be cool. I always get looking at Pinterest and getting ideas from different places. If I see something that's like, oh, that's really cool. And then just kind of thinking about, how can I make that my own? How can I modify it or, know?

The only image I did actually buy the image to use was the the tiger. I bought the image and the rights to use it. So that one I modified a little bit, but not very much. Yeah, it's mostly taken from an image I bought.

Andi (26:05.142)
Okay, very cool, very cool. Getting back to our rapid fire questions, are you a yardage or pre-cuts buyer?

Cindy (26:16.374)
YARDI

Andi (26:17.166)
We have found that, yeah, for a lot of our designer friends that it's, you just have so much flexibility with yardage. But I know there are some quilt designers that really do focus and work with pre-cuts a lot too. So that's why we asked the question. And this is off script also, but

Do you work with solids or prints?

Cindy (26:52.054)
usually I think tone on tones. I do very little with plain solids. love batiks. A lot of my patterns, though I feel like they do well if they're more saturated colors against a lighter background or vice versa. It's a dark background and really light colors. I haven't done any of those myself, but some of my customers are in my classes. They've done that where they kind of flipped it and reversed it. And that's really striking too, really pretty.

But I like saturated colors, so usually tone on tone that doesn't have a lot of print to it.

Andi (27:25.17)
And your favorite notion or tool, you mentioned the hotfix adhesive, but what else is important for application?

Cindy (27:33.07)
Yeah, this is one of my things. The other one. at least I got it right here. They're Fiskars micro tip.

Cindy (27:43.79)
They get the spring-loaded scissors. They are great because I have problems with my hand and cutting and with those spring-loaded scissors they are literally half the work because most of the time with scissors you have squeeze with one motion and then pull your hands apart for a second motion when you're cutting. But with the spring-loaded you squeeze with one motion and just relax your hand. So it really saves on the hand. So people who have arthritis or carpal tunnel.

I like that they're sharp right to the tip. when I make a jean quilt or a rag quilt and I have to a little snipping of the edges there, they're sharp right to the tip. So those scissors, I think I've got at least three pairs around in different rooms and with my machine and I use them for everything. I cut paper with them too. I know people, I told them.

Andi (28:34.108)
Mark those paper scissors, dude!

Cindy (28:37.966)
Very controversial, I know. I heard someone say that it used to be you can't cut paper with your fabric scissors because paper used to have more impurities in it and it would dull your scissors because it had more, maybe a big fine part or something in it. More impurities. But nowadays the paper is so pure that they don't dull the scissors so you can use them.

But I do use the same scissors. I use them for cutting fabric and paper. I had my first pair of microfiber scissors I got probably over 20 years ago. Wow. Good. And they still work well.

Andi (29:18.934)
Yeah, yeah, we'll have to find a link and put that in the show notes too. But that's a great recommendation. As you said, all these little physical obstacles that we have to overcome as we age, it's definitely, definitely worth it to find ways around so we can continue to continue to enjoy this hobby. But we talked a little bit about the inspiration for your patterns. But who is inspiring you right now?

Cindy (29:51.67)
say my parents have been my biggest inspiration just because they are always you know just that can-do attitude you can do it you can do anything you want you can start your own business you can you know like I said my dad used to work construction and he would do a lot of remodeling in the summers and I worked with him and I would learn how to do mean I learned how to do sheetrock and shingling and siding and drywall I mean I could you know I we built

decks and garages and putting in installing windows. And just from that, any home remodel project, I'm like, oh yeah, we can do that. We can do the wiring. We can do it. And so just the attitude that I can do it has really helped me in the business a lot because there's so many things to learn. There's just so many different programs to learn and how to order this and where to go for that. There's just a lot of things to learn and they really inspired me to just instill in me.

The attitude that you can do it.

Andi (30:52.206)
Yeah, for sure. That's great. Thinking of our next question, what is your favorite part of having a quilt business?

Cindy (31:06.414)
Good question. I like the flexibility and the hours. Well, there's a lot of hours. But flexibility, if something comes up, need to take time out during the day or something, know, can go do that. I love teaching classes. I love working with the ladies. They're just, you know, and a few men. Yeah, mostly predominantly ladies. And when they

come into class thinking they can't do it and they end up with a project that they're so proud of. It just feels so good being able to teach them something and give them a new project to enjoy. So that's been really fun.

Andi (31:42.796)
Yeah, I agree. It just, I get so energized by the creativity of the quilt community that it's wonderful. And how many quilts are in the room with you right now?

Cindy (31:58.414)
Finished quilts of Peter. So I have this one behind me. Most of my quilts are in other rooms in the house, but I do have a bin in here that I take to trunk shows. So there's probably, my smaller projects are in there. So it's probably maybe 10 in there. yeah, maybe 10, 12 quilts or so. My bigger one's up, yeah, I've got a lot throughout the house.

Andi (32:18.786)
Ha ha!

Andi (32:24.97)
That's great. That's great. Well, Cindy, that brings us to the end of our conversation. I am so delighted to have spent this time with Cindy from Patterns on the Prairie, and we wish you continued success.

Cindy (32:39.79)
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Andi (32:41.6)
Of course.