Kathy and Lynn have been married for over 37 years. We have six children who are all married but for the our youngest. The whole time that I have known Kathy, we met in High School, she has loved sewing. Her father was a farmer in Northern Utah. Being a farmer he had to do a lot of extra jobs to make a living. As a teenager Kathy helped her dad with some of his side jobs. Harold's entrepreneurial spirit had a huge impact on Kathy. She has sewn nightgowns, tailored clothes for customers, made many items that she would sell at Boutiques.
I grew up moving every two to three years and moving around the United States and two times in Japan. My dad was in the Air Force and had a good foundation in sales before joining the ROTC program at the University of Utah.
Kathy Quilts! had its early beginnings partnering with Stylish Fabrics Bernina in Logan Utah. We came up with that name because that is what Kathy does, she quilts! We were the first company to sell Grace Frames on EBAY and one of the few stores to have an internet presance. I would work from home selling Grace hand quilting frames and hoops on the internet and Kathy quilted for her customers on her Gammill Classic. She has quilted well over 4,000 quilts over the past 23 years and is and was probably one of the most profitable professional quilters in Northern Utah. Kathy and I told Jim Bagley at the Grace Company that we needed a machine frame that we could put a domestic sewing machine on to enhance our sales. The GMQ was born shortly after that. We sold Juki 98E's along with the GMQ's like hotcakes.
It wasn't too long after selling the Grace machine frames with a short arm machine that we knew that we needed a longer throat machine. In late 2013 we introduced the Block RockiT 14+ which took many years for the Grace Company to develop for us. When we first introduced it the price point was unbelievable. So many people wanted to do long-arm style quilting but the cost was just too much for people that just wanted to quilt for themselves, so this new machine was just want they had always hoped for.
The Block RockiT 14+, it was always a 15 inch throat machines so we eventually changed the name to Block RockiT 15, sold so well that lots of online shops and big name online companies wanted to sell them too. They couldn't use the name Block RockiT because Kathy Quilts owned the rights to that name so the Grace Company came up with the Q'nique brand.
What sets
Kathy Quilts! apart from other quilting machine manufacturers is that we want our machine owners to be successful when embarking upon the long-arm adventure. We have observed over the years that most companies that sell long-arm machines never really have a plan for their customers to learn how to use their machine. With the experience that Kathy has quilting professionally she knows the techniques, tips and tricks that make learning how to become an awesome quilter a lot easier. Too many people start off just stippling or meandering their quilts and never quite learn that with a little more direction and practice they could have their quilts looking so much better.
It is Kathy and my desire to help the quilting community to enjoy better quilting with less stress. The majority of issues people have with their quilting machines is that they just don't have enough experience so they make fundamental mistakes which can be really frustrating. We want to help you avoid those mistakes or at least learn from them so you can blossom into the quilter you have always wanted to become.
Thanks,
Lynn Barlow
Kathy Quilts!
