Introduction

Okay, so I've been blogging for a couple weeks now. And I started thinking maybe I should have introduced myself in my first post. But I never do things in the right order - so I'll give you the intro now...

I'm Sonja Koch. I first stumbled into quilting 18 years ago while on summer break from college. My husband and I always spent the summers living with his parents to save on rent and because Tim worked for his Dad making the money we would live off of for the next semester of college. It was a very small town in rural Arkansas, no summer jobs available for me and not much else to do, so I hung out a lot with my new mother-in-law. Now don't get me wrong, I love my mother-in-law very much, BUT we had to find something to do together. A common interest. We tried several different things. Sewing clothes, painting sweatshirts, making stuffed rabbits. Nothing really clicked. One day we were talking about one of her dear friends, Victoria, who was a quilter. My mother-in-law mentioned that she wanted to make a quilt. I said so did I. So we bought a booklet at Wal Mart. Some fabric at Marshall's. And we dove in!

We knew nothing about quilting. Not even enough to know that the pattern I had chosen was challenging even for experienced quilters. My first quilt was a blue and white Drunkard's Path called Leaping Frogs. I made templates out of cardboard and traced each piece onto the fabric. Cut them out with scissors, and tediously sewed the curved pieces together. I loved every minute of it. So much so, that my second quilt was also a Drunkard's path. Between the two of us, we made 6 quilts that summer. We were both hooked.

Summer ended. College started back. Back to the books. But the quilting bug had bit me. I sewed quilts every chance I got. I graduated, got a job at an accounting firm.

Did taxes and audits by day - Ugh!
Made quilts at night - Ahh!

By this time, my husband and I were ready to start a family. I wanted to be able to stay at home with our kids. Quiting my accounting job was no hard decision, but being a one income family was not an option either. I needed to find something I could do from home.

Making quilts and selling them at our area craft fairs was what I wanted to do. But the closest machine quilter that I could find was near my mother-in-law - four hours away. Surely I was not the only quilter in my area who didn't want to hand quilt every top. That was the little spark that started my business - SoSews Quilts.

I bought a longarm quilting machine the next week. And dove in! For the past 15 years, I've been machine quilting tops for many wonderful quilters in the NW Arkansas area. A few years ago, a lady came to me looking for someone who could turn her kids high school and college t-shirts into memory quilts.

That was the start of SoSews T-shirt Quilts. Now I get to use my love of quilting to help people turn their memorable t-shirts into a unique quilt that they will treasure for a lifetime. How cool is that!

Til next time -

Sonja