Hi, I'm the husband and main operator of the quilting machine at Quilts by Lady Zoe. Zoe has been making quilts for family members, friends and customers for a little while now, but until recently, I was an ER Nurse for a major Hospital in the area. Nurses in general are a bit strange in their ways of thinking and I'm no exception. We tend to nit pick, over achieve and pay special attention to details that only a few people would understand. We are more or less O.C.D.-ers (obsessive compulsive disorder), it's sort of imbedded into us with our schooling.
            About 6 months ago, I retired from nursing due to neuropathy in my feet from being on my feet 12 hour days. The constant run, standing at bedside for hours during procedures and transporting heavy hospital beds to the various floors of the house really took a toll on the tendons in my feet. Surgery helped, but the end result was neuropathy, which made it very difficult to be on my feet for more than an hour or two. Going back into geriatrics or psychiatric nurging was not an option for me any longer and I was burnt out anyhow, so I retired to be a stay at home and watch the kids type dad ( Mr. mom).
             Zoe had been making her quilts with a professional sewing machine, which was doing okay for her, but she always wanted to be able to quilt with a free style machine on a frame. I did a little looking around and found a used New Joy quilting frame that had a Brother quilting sewing machine as a package deal. They were asking $1300.00 for the package, but I noticed they placed the ad a while ago and hadn't sold it yet. I decided to make them an offer and picked it up 2 hours later for $1000.00 even. When we got the thing home and put it together, I had a better understanding of why they decided to upgrade their operation. The New Joy frame is a bit flimsy in the bar department. The bars are made of 1" square aluminum  tubing, which if all your going to do is quilt small baby quilts and thus set the frame up with one bar length of five feet, then you wouldn't have a problem.

            Zoe and I set our frame up to accommodate a California king quilt with a drop, which is 116 inches square plus the shrinkage factor, so the flimsiness of those aluminum tubes was not going to swing in my playground. I went down to the local steel mill and purchased 1" X 145" schedule 40 pipe, some 3/4" round aluminum solid stock for the end bolts and replaced the flimsy bars with sturdy ones.Now we can quilt a quilt up to 12 foot without any bow in the middle. By the way, Nursing is just one of my talents that got me out of the rain,I built Zoe's website myself, so I'm not exactly work-less, just tired of the rat race. After I got the frame in order, I started sewing with the machine only to find out that just because someone tells you something is in great condition, doesn't mean they're telling you the truth. Nothing was working right, continually breaking threads, not picking up bobbin threads, you name it, it was going wrong. I'm not a professional seamstress and I was getting pretty upset with the way things were going. We were getting backed up on sells and Zoe was back to quilting on her machine without fancy free hand work.
         The online help areas were telling me that my machine was out of time, so I took it down to the local fix-it shop and he so-called timed it for me. A wasted $65.00 later and the machine still wasn't working properly. Zoe kept insisting I was going too fast, but we found a little shop in town that made her think twice. This man was a professional and he had professionals working for him. Cathy helped us purchase the right threads, needles and oil to take care of our machine. She also gave us great information on fabric outlets and tricks of the trade. I'm a true believer in 'Your never to old to learn' and I absorbed as much as I could of what this lady was telling me. I was ready to go out and buy a new machine and throw this one out the window.
           We've been doing it now for a while and between the frame sturdiness, the proper working machine and a whole lot of experience, my wife and I are doing okay. We've sold numerous quilts with great looking patterns and styles. We're still not what I would call professionals, but we've come a long way. Our quilts are perfect, but that's why we call them homemade and otherwise they would be one of those assembly line made quilts that your neighbor owns that looks just like his daughters quilt that looks just like her best friends quilt and on and on.

We are Quilts by Lady Zoe, personalized custom homemade quilts that you design and we build it for you.




        

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