Daniela Stout – Cozy Quilts
In this interview with Daniela Stout, we talk about her Strip Tube Ruler (and Junior!) and how they came to be.
Daniela Stout is the owner of Cozy Quilt Shop in El Cajon, which opened in 2003. Daniela was a marketing manager for a book distributor, and dreamed of running her own business with her husband Rick. Rick had the business know-how and Daniela had a passion for quilting. After many months of dreaming, planning, and exploring, they took the leap. And have loved it ever since.
Why “Cozy Quilt Shop”? Their kids call a blanket of any kind a “cozy.” When they are cold, or when they are sick, they ask for a cozy. It’s a name that means home and comfort to the Stout family. And that’s just what they wanted for their new store.
As the business grew, they launched a line of patterns called Cozy Quilt Designs. They also launched the greatest “of-the-month” program called “Strip Club!” Each month they offer a coordinated bundle of about 40 – 2 ½” strips and a new original pattern to help put the strips to use. They have a lecture once a month to debut the new sample and present the pattern. It’s a lot of fun for everyone and everyone is welcome. While they put this event on hold because of stupid covid and stupid cancer, it’s back and you should absolutey go and join the fun!
As you may have gathered from the “stupid cancer” comment above, Daniela was diagnosed with cancer. It was on her 49th birthday, November 10, 2020. Ovarian cancer. Stage 3b. It was a bumpy path with some very low lows. As with all cancer journeys, it was a frightening time. But we are happy to report things took a turn for the better, and we are expecting the words “remission” and “maintenance” to overshadow chemotherapy and infusion.
Daniela is truly an inspiration to many quilters, and quilt shop owners… we’re so happy to share her story this week on the podcast!
Daniela Stout Show Notes:
Cozy Creative Center in El Cajon
Cozy Creative Center website
Cozy Quilt Designs Youtube
Cozy Creative Center Youtube
Cozy Creative Center on Facebook
Cozy Quilt Designs on Facebook
Cozy Quilt Designs on Instagram
Cozy Creative Center on Instagram
Read more about Daniela’s journey with Ovarian Cancer here
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Daniela Stout Interview transcript:
Carolina Moore:
I love Notions, and I’m guessing that you do too. Hey there, friend. It’s Carolina Moore, your favorite sewing and quilting YouTuber, and now podcaster here with another episode.
So today on the podcast, I’m so excited because we have Daniela Stout and I’ve known Daniela… I knew of her before I moved to San Diego, but I met her very shortly after moving to San Diego eight and a half years ago, and she quickly became a friend and also a mentor of mine. And so, I’m so excited to bring her here on the podcast, so you can know more about her. You may already know of her from her very famous strip club because Daniela is the fabulous mind behind this strip club, but she also has a notion. I’ll let Daniela introduce herself as well. Daniela, tell us how you got started in quilting.
Daniela Stout:
Oh, Carolina, thanks so much for having me. I think this podcast is just fantastic and I appreciate you letting me join The fun. We opened the shop… It’s been 20 years now, and before that I was a self-taught quilter and self-taught very poorly.
Carolina Moore:
Aw.
Daniela Stout:
I was living as a very poor, very bad, right out of college, trying to make a go of it person in San Francisco, and I had to commute to Marin, which is across the Golden Gate Bridge, and these are decisions I probably shouldn’t have made is to live in a very expensive town. So I didn’t have much money, but I did make some overtime, so I saved up my overtime money and I went to, I think it was a Hancock store, and bought a sewing machine out of a box and I bought a book, and that’s how I started to sew.
I knew that I wanted to because I needed the break from the work and the grind and everything, and sewing has always appealed to me, although I never really did it as a kid. I just kind of picked it up out of college, and so I was reading books and reading concepts, and I don’t read directions very well, which is funny that I’m a pattern writer.
Carolina Moore:
But it means you know the directions that tend to trip people up because you’ve been tripped up by them.
Daniela Stout:
That’s very kind we’re going to go with that. Actually, I take great pride. I think I’m a good pattern writer, but I don’t read them very well, so I only read bits and pieces and back when I was learning how to quilt, I didn’t have a quarter inch foot because I had to drive all the way down to South San Francisco or somewhere where I bought the machine. If I needed a foot, nothing was convenient, and so I made this assumption that if I sew everything with the same foot, like your basic number one foot then-
Carolina Moore:
It’ll be fine.
Daniela Stout:
I’ll be fine. It’ll all work out. You’re laughing. Why are you laughing, because you know that’s not the case?
Carolina Moore:
Well, yes, but also because I did the same thing. I don’t know how long I’d been quilting when someone introduced me to a quarter inch foot and I said, “Wait, they make those?” I was, “What?”
Daniela Stout:
Well, you made me feel a whole lot better because I always tell this story sheepishly.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, gosh, no.
Daniela Stout:
I’m supposed to be the expert with a quilt shop and pattern and everything, and no.
Carolina Moore:
I was working at a quilt shop when the quilt shop owner said, “Well, you should just use a quarter inch foot and I said, “Wait, the what?”
Daniela Stout:
Oh my goodness. Gosh, that makes me feel so much better.
Carolina Moore:
And I also lived in San Jose for eight years, so speaking of picking really expensive cities to start in right out of college, so I’m resonating with so much of your story. It just mirrors so much of mine.
Daniela Stout:
Well, it was not a wise decision, but it was a good decision for me and I’m glad that I did it, but it was not a good financial decision to live there, and I mentioned that I had to cross the Golden Gate Bridge. Well, I had to pay a toll every day to cross that Golden Gate Bridge, and my car was such a piece of junk that one day it broke down on the Golden Gate Bridge.
Carolina Moore:
No.
Daniela Stout:
And it was rainy and dark and cold-
Carolina Moore:
Of course.
Daniela Stout:
Did I mention that my job was just soul sucking and demoralizing? I was driving home, all I wanted to do was get home, and then it broke down on the Golden Gate Bridge, and then Caltrans, which is the road service here in California, a big truck pulled up behind me and I’m like, “Oh, this is so kind, he’s going to help me.” No, he pushed me off the bridge, not off the side of the bridge, but he pushed me to get me going because you can’t stop the flow of traffic on that bridge, and he needed me to get off the bridge. So he pushed my car along the road, but stopped so I could pay the toll.
Carolina Moore:
Of course.
Daniela Stout:
And then continued to push me along the road and then pushed me into this gravel parking lot where he left me.
Carolina Moore:
Figure it out, not my problem anymore.
Daniela Stout:
Anyway, so that was my early experience. So, I bought probably the cheapest machine that I could. I bought it from a box store, which was a mistake. I bought a book, and when I started this concept of rotary cutting was great, but I couldn’t afford a mat and I didn’t really have a place to put it because I was in a very small apartment and I really was cutting on my bed. So I’m like, “Well that mat is very expensive, so I’m just going to use this cardboard to do my cutting with my rotary cutter and my ruler.”
Carolina Moore:
Sure.
Daniela Stout:
Which I also need to tell you doesn’t work. No, let me rephrase, it works once.
Carolina Moore:
It’s not self-healing cardboard, like our self-healing mats?
Daniela Stout:
It’s not a self-healing cardboard, but I still loved it. I loved the whole process, sort of the communing with the machine. And even though I completed a quilt and it is a mess, we call it Frankenstein because I went to a quilt shop and it was not in San Francisco, it was on the outskirts, and I felt like I didn’t belong there. I felt like… I know, it was a pretty sad experience, and you got to look back on it and laugh now, but I don’t know. It felt cliquey and nichey, and I didn’t know the jargon, so I felt like I didn’t belong, which is why now in my shop, I try really hard to make everybody feel welcome.
That is my main goal, is just a brand new beginner doesn’t know what a fact order is. They may not even know how wide a fabric is, they don’t know how much yardage they need. Let’s just welcome them and help them in because I did not have that experience in my first quilt shop, but I bought a bunch of fabric and then I couldn’t cut it because I was too scared to, so then I went to Joanne’s and bought some other fabric, and that fabric was crap, but I still have that quilt. It’s disintegrating, everything has faded.
I should have just used the good stuff, but it’s our love quilt. It’s the one we still cherish and love, and even though the points don’t match, it really is very tragic. It was a quilt in a day project, which I read, not quilt in a day, but quilt in a year, because it took me a good year to get that thing done.
And then over time, I moved down here to the San Diego area and got married, and then I was able to… I had a little more room, a little more money, and I was able to buy a few better supplies, and then my husband and I… He always had the desire to run his own business, but didn’t have the passion for the subject, and even though I was very bad at it, I did have the passion for the subject. So, we did a lot of research and put a business plan together and played the game of what if we owned a quilt shop? And after a bit of time, it was, we either need to stop playing this game or we need to own a quilt shop. So, guess which one we did?
Carolina Moore:
Well, I have the spoiler, so yes, I know you opened a quilt shop.
Daniela Stout:
Yes, we did. We opened a quilt shop and we named it Cozy Quilt Shop, and the reason is cozy is another word for a blanket or a quilt or anything that is warm and comforting in our household. So the kids will say, “Can you hand me a cozy?”
Carolina Moore:
Oh.
Daniela Stout:
So, that made sense to us to name the shop Cozy Quilt Shop.
Carolina Moore:
And so, you started a quilt shop and you weren’t writing patterns yet at that point when you opened the quilt shop?
Daniela Stout:
Right, I didn’t know I could. I didn’t know I should, I didn’t know anything.
Carolina Moore:
No one had granted you the permission to write your own patterns yet?
Daniela Stout:
That’s exactly right, well said.
Carolina Moore:
I think it’s a very universal experience with many of us. Men may have it as well, but I think it’s very universal with women that it’s like, “Well, no one’s told me that it’s for me to do the thing. I need to wait for someone to say, ‘Oh, you’re allowed to do that,’ before I can go do it.” So, that doesn’t surprise me. I’ve had the very same where I’m like, “Who am I waiting to grant me a certificate of it’s okay?”
Daniela Stout:
Well, as I said, I didn’t know that I could and well, we started a strip club because at the time we had, I think, 20 shops in the San Diego County area, so I needed something to distinguish myself from the other shops. So, we started this thing called Strip Club, two and a half inch strip. Originally, it was every bolt that came through the back door, I think it was like 50 cents a strip or something like that, to maybe 80 cents a strip.
Carolina Moore:
So, while some shops have fat quarters of everything, you all had two and a half inch strips of everything?
Daniela Stout:
We did, two and a half inch strips, and then a customer asked me, “What do I do with these strips?” And I thought, “Well, that’s not my job,” and then I realized, that is exactly my job. So, it was a mishmash of different fabrics. We had black and whites, juveniles, flannels, batiks, it was everything that came in for that month. And then I also realized that I couldn’t continue doing it that way because it had no purpose.
So, we started to do coordinated bundles, and we actually did 50 strips, and then I had a staff member who was active with Prayers & Squares and had written some patterns, and she said, “I have a couple patterns that use two and a half inch strips. Would you like to publish those or hand them out to your students?” And I thought, “Yeah,” that’s how Strip Club was born, and I don’t know if you know her, it’s Quiltin’ Tia, Susan Ziegler.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, I know the name, but I don’t know her, no.
Daniela Stout:
She’s phenomenal. A great mind. She’s still doing patterns, and she was instrumental in getting us started. So as with just about everything with the business, I started doing something and then something else came up and I’m like, “Well, let me go through this store and let me go through this store and let me go through this store,” and so it’s been a fun journey.
Carolina Moore:
So then you started writing patterns. In Strip Club, you were writing a pattern every single month for the people who were coming into the shop?
Daniela Stout:
Yes, every single month, a new pattern for two and a half new strips.
Carolina Moore:
And then other shops started buying those from you as well to use, right?
Daniela Stout:
That’s right. I went on behalf of a fabric company too, something called Quilt Market. I know you know Quilt Market.
Carolina Moore:
Mm-hmm.
Daniela Stout:
And they asked me if I would do a schoolhouse for them, and at that time, I was not reselling. Other shops were not buying our patterns, but I shared the idea of the Strip Club. So, you cut the two and a half inch strips, you have a curated bundle… And this was all before jelly rolls. So, you have a curated bundle and then you have a pattern to go with it. And in our shop, we gave that pattern away for free, and we had a great response.
Strip Club Saturday was our best Saturday, so I shared that with other shops because that’s what we do, we share, and then one of the shocks said to me, “Can I buy your patterns?” I went, “No,” and in my head I went, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, you can.” And so I went, “Yes,” and that is how Cozy Quilt Designs, our publishing company was born.
Carolina Moore:
And since then, you all have not only written patterns, but books as well.
Daniela Stout:
Yes, so then the jelly rolls came out, and I am sure we had a little hand in that just as part of the tipping point. I was talking with Moda and letting them know, and they said, “Well, how many projects can you do with just two and a half inch strips?” I’m like, “Oh, no, not just two and a half. You add background, you can add this, you can do that,” and I just kind of saw a little light bulb, and then later on, jelly rolls came on the market, and I think that jelly roll changed the shape of this industry, don’t you?
Carolina Moore:
For sure, pre concept of all sizes. It makes things accessible, it makes all different fabrics accessible in terms of how much does it cost to buy yardage? And now if you need to buy at least a fat quarter, a fat eighth of 20 different fabrics to get that scrappy variety look that we love, jelly rolls and layer cakes and charm packs and all that, they make that so much faster.
Daniela Stout:
I totally agree, and they’re often beautifully put together, so all you have to do is sometimes it’s hard to even break into them because they look so nice as a bundle.
Carolina Moore:
And a shop doesn’t have to worry about, do we need to keep every single one of these fabrics here in the store? A shop is now able to bring an entire collection in, and we quilters can enjoy the entire collection without the shop having to bring in 20 different bolts of fabric.
Daniela Stout:
20, if you’re lucky, sometimes 40.
Carolina Moore:
Yep.
Daniela Stout:
So fun fact, when our patterns were originally written for 50 strips, but when jelly rolls came on the market, we adjusted, and so we started to write more for 40. All of our patterns have multiple sizes, because you know this, you’re going to get the question, how do you make it bigger and how do you make it smaller? So I say, “I’m not good doing math on my feet,” so I tend to get all the math done at once. That’s why most of our patterns are written for multiple sizes, but there’s always one size in there that’s really perfect for that jelly roll. It’s either 40 or fewer, and we did adjust from 50 down to 40 once those jelly rolls came on the market.
Carolina Moore:
Sure, that makes sense. So you were doing these patterns, and somewhere you came out with this ingenious ruler called the strip tube ruler?
Daniela Stout:
Yeah, well, that was actually my mom’s idea. We were using a technique that the Amish use, which is the tube technique for one of our very first patterns called Roman Stripes, and it started with a square up ruler. And still to this day, every one of my patterns that’s written for the strip tube ruler has the alternate directions to use the square up ruler. My mom at the time was making every one of our samples, so she would make a quilt a month.
Carolina Moore:
Yay, mom.
Daniela Stout:
I know, and she said to me, “You know, Daniela, you could probably come up with a ruler.” Now, we weren’t in the ruler business by then. We were in the paper business. We were doing the paper patterns in the books, we were self-publishing our books, but now we’re talking about acrylic. That’s a whole different material and a whole different supplier, and I didn’t know anything about it, and she mocked it up. She did it like a PDF, “If you did it like this, you can make a ruler and you can sell the ruler.”
And I thought, “Oh, that’s such a hassle.” So the very next day, one of my customers was in our Strip Club class, and she said, “Have you ever thought about making a ruler to do this?” And I was like, “Really?” So mom said it, blah, blah, blah, ignore. A customer says it, “Oh, my God, really?”
Carolina Moore:
Isn’t that the way it is? Whatever, mom, but then someone else, “Ooh, great idea.”
Daniela Stout:
And actually it was a great idea, so she did, she mocked up the prototype, and I didn’t know how to get any of that done, printed, and made. So, we went to a plastic supply store here. No, Rick went to Home Depot, my husband, and he got some plexiglass and a cutter, and he sort of cut it out and then taped on all the measurements and everything to make us a prototype, and that’s how the strip tube ruler was born.
Carolina Moore:
Do you still have that original taped up, cut piece of plexiglass?
Daniela Stout:
Oh, I don’t think so.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, that would be so funny.
Daniela Stout:
Wouldn’t it? It was pretty rudimentary, borderline tragic.
Carolina Moore:
I’m just wondering if the edges were really straight, so that it cut well, or if it was just like, “This is kind of what it would look like. It’s not functional.”
Daniela Stout:
I think the two sides that we used for cutting were good enough to use, but then the bottom one had a sliver out of it, and it was just as if you chipped a ruler. It was not great, but the concept worked. That got us started.
Carolina Moore:
So for people who aren’t familiar with the tube method, can you describe how it works?
Daniela Stout:
Oh yeah, it’s fantastic. It’s not like anything else in quilting, quilting you normally, you cut strips, you sew them together, you cut them down, you sew them together, you cut them down. Well, in this case, you had them front and a back. Now, they can be pieced or they can be solid, and you put them right sides together. So, you sew them into a tube by a quarter inch seam up along one side and down the other side. So, now you have a tube that is 40 inches wide and long and however wide depending-
Carolina Moore:
So, all of your right sides are all tucked in this tube of fabric, and so you can’t see all the pretty sides of your fabric at this point. It’s all-
Daniela Stout:
All the right sides, right, so you only have the wrong sides out on either side, and then you place the ruler on the stitching line, and you cut up and down. So you cut into the tube, which cuts a triangle that opens into a square that is the same size that your measurement is. So, it’s not a triangle ruler in any way. It’s actually a square ruler, but it cuts triangles that open up into squares.
Carolina Moore:
So, it makes fancy half square triangles of all kinds.
Daniela Stout:
It does, fancy half square triangles of all kinds. So, if you have one side of your tube is pieced and the other side is solid, you’ll get one effect. If they’re both pieced, you’ll get another effect. I thought that maybe we’d have, I don’t know, 20 patterns or so that we could use with it at most. We still keep coming up with ideas to use that ruler. There’s just so many possibilities, and it’s still our number one bestselling item ever.
Carolina Moore:
Is the ruler?
Daniela Stout:
Yeah.
Carolina Moore:
That does not surprise me.
Daniela Stout:
It’s a terrific little invention, and I do blame my mom.
Carolina Moore:
Does she get royalties or just hugs?
Daniela Stout:
She does, yes.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, she does?
Daniela Stout:
Yes.
Carolina Moore:
Look at that. Oh, I love that.
Daniela Stout:
Yeah.
Carolina Moore:
I love that.
Daniela Stout:
She’s super talented. She didn’t quilt until I had a quilt shop. She said to me, “Daniela, why would I take perfectly good fabric to cut it down, to sew it back together, to cut it down to make a blanket?” Especially because the calico browns is always what came to her mind when she thought about quilting. Well, then when I brought boutiques in, she was like, “Oh,” so not only did she have a newfound desire to learn something new, quilting, she also expanded her creative skills, and she started to design a lot of our bestselling patterns. So many of them… Her name is Georgette Dell’Orco, so if you ever see Cozy Quilt Designs, truly some of our bestsellers are hers. You’ll see her name on there, Georgette Dell’Orco, and then she came up with this idea of the ruler. She’s pretty something.
Carolina Moore:
I remember some digitized designs that I thought that you all had, and I said, “Oh, these are really cool,” and I assumed that you’d made them, but no, your mom does digitizing as well?
Daniela Stout:
She does, but the digitized designs are those ones that you put into the robotic long arm quilters, and she does edge to edge, and she does some whole cloth, and she does some ones that you can drop in for the blocks. I don’t know anything about that. She developed the technique, the designs, she does the artwork, she exports it to all the different long-arm formats, she has her own website, she sells on our own website. So, our little quilting business actually launched her business too.
Carolina Moore:
This is now the I Love Notions podcast/Georgette fan club.
Daniela Stout:
Everybody should be a member of the Georgette fan club.
Carolina Moore:
So, you came up with the idea for the strip tube ruler, you launched it, people went crazy for it because it’s amazing and we needed it in this world, and then you made a mini version?
Daniela Stout:
I did make a mini version, and it’s because people were asking for it, very simply. And the concept of the mini version is that just like a smaller square up ruler is easier to use with smaller blocks, a smaller strip tube ruler is easier to use with smaller cuts. So, the larger one goes up to nine and a half inches, allowing you the ability to make nine and a half inch squares, the smaller one goes up to six and a half inches. If you’re doing a little work like two and a half inch or four and a half inch cuts, it’s nicer to use the smaller one. So the mini one came along, we called him junior, and he doesn’t sell as well as senior does because senior can do everything that junior can do, but he sure is handy.
Carolina Moore:
Yes, I have them both, of course.
Daniela Stout:
Thank you.
Carolina Moore:
I might be a Notions addict, which could be part of the reason for the podcast, so I get to learn-
Daniela Stout:
Well, that does make sense. I love a good gadget. My husband, in fact, calls me Gadget Girl.
Carolina Moore:
Yes, I love Notions, I love all the Notions. I love walking through the fabric on my way to the Notions wall to see what all the Notions are I still love the fabric and I definitely want the pretty fabric, but I want to know what other quilters have designed to make my life easier, or for me to finally take the leap to try that technique that always felt like it was maybe a little too out of reach for me, and maybe it’s from that quarter inch foot angst. I didn’t know about quarter inch foot PTSD, that it’s like, “Okay, if I didn’t know about that, what other amazing tools are out there that no one has told me about that I need to go discover?”
Daniela Stout:
I know, I sometimes wish that I could just hold a tour group and go over our Notions wall and just demo each thing. This is great because of this, this is great because of this. I should do that.
Carolina Moore:
You should.
Daniela Stout:
A Notions tour.
Carolina Moore:
Yes, let me know. I’m going to buy a ticket. I want to be in the audience for that one, and you’re local, so this is totally realistic for me to be able to go and hang out and watch the Notions tour, that would be so fun.
Daniela Stout:
We do demo often just for that reason because in a package, something that might look like a pen, looks like nothing, but once you demo it and once you get it out there, it’s like, “Oh, that’s not just a pen, that is a life changer.”
Carolina Moore:
Right, and information just isn’t on the package.
Daniela Stout:
You just can’t relate. It’s like I’ve learned no matter how great your photography is, it’ll never be as good as the actual quilt. It’s just one of those things, so our job is to get the word out there like on podcasts like this.
Carolina Moore:
Podcasts, videos. I find that sometimes the best place to find out about a cool Notion is at sewings, like retreats where I’m looking over the table like, “What is everyone else doing? Ooh, what is that that you’re playing with? What is that thing? I want to know about what that thing is.”
Daniela Stout:
You’re absolutely right, the chance to learn from others who have already learned something and share it with us.
Carolina Moore:
Or fabulous quilt shops that have demos. I love doing a shop hop and seeing the different demos that shops have, because they’re always showing the new crazy thing that you have to see to understand, but once you understand it, you don’t understand how you live without it.
Daniela Stout:
That’s exactly right.
Carolina Moore:
So, we haven’t touched on that you’re also a fabric designer in addition to being a pattern designer and a Notion designer and a book author of… Do you even know how many books at this point?
Daniela Stout:
Oh, no. I don’t know how many books and I don’t know how many patterns.
Carolina Moore:
It’s definitely double digits for books, and I bet you it’s triple digits for patterns.
Daniela Stout:
Yes, it is for sure. We have over 100 strip patterns, and that’s just strip patterns because then we started to branch out to fact order patterns. Some half yard cut patterns. We have just some general patterns that don’t call for pre cuts, so it’s a whole lot of patterns. In fact, I have a friend that had a shop in Georgia and she did Strip Club every month, and she very loyally only used our patterns. And when she celebrated her 100th Strip Club using our patterns, I was like, “I have that many patterns?” And so, I went and counted them. It’s a good number of strip patterns, and sometimes, Carolina, do you ever do this? You go back and look at something that you’ve done and you’re like, damn, that was good?
Carolina Moore:
Yes.
Daniela Stout:
That’s a really great pattern. I go back sometimes, I land on things years old, I’m like, “That’s really good. I did that? That’s good,” then I pat myself on the back a little bit.
Carolina Moore:
Right. Well, because sometimes I just expect to look at my older stuff and be like, “Ah, that was from forever ago. It’s not as good anymore, but past Carolina, she did okay sometimes, and past Daniela definitely.
Daniela Stout:
I got better as a writer, I’ll guarantee you that, but some of those designs are fantastic, but still-
Carolina Moore:
[inaudible 00:26:08]-
Daniela Stout:
Back to the fabric, I don’t design anymore. I think after COVID, it just sort of took a backseat, but it was a great run. It was just terrific. So, Timeless Treasures asked me if I would like to design fabric, and I’m not an artist. I don’t have a graphic background at all. I’m a literature history major that decided to be a business owner, so not my brain set at all to do the graphics work. So I said, “I don’t do that.”
And they’re like, “That’s okay, I think we can come up with something.” So they asked me, “Would you like to do cottons or would you like to do batiks?” And I just find batik fabrics are gorgeous and timeless, not to have a company pun there, and so I said, “Batik fabrics,” so my job in designing fabrics… And I think the word curate is really a better word than design, my job was to go into their swatch room. Just close your eyes and imagine-
Carolina Moore:
All right, I’m closing my eyes.
Daniela Stout:
A room, I don’t know, 20 by 20, maybe 30 by 30 full of one yard cuts straight from Bali. You might have a chop in five different variations of blue, and then next to it, those same variations with a different chop, and my chop-
Carolina Moore:
When you’re saying a chop, what is a chop?
Daniela Stout:
Like the Batik wax reverse [inaudible 00:27:37]-
Carolina Moore:
The stamp thing?
Daniela Stout:
Yes, the stamp thing on the batiks.
Carolina Moore:
So it’s the same design, but all different colors?
Daniela Stout:
So in one stack, yes, so the same design, all different colors and you know, the batiks there, they can be dyed a little, a lot more at different color, change the tone. So, there can be a lot of simple variety. It kind of looks the same, but it’s different enough, so you have one stack that looks like that, and then another stack that are the same colors, but with a different design on it, and they’re kind of stacked by color, but there’s not really an organization to it.
We have this little wheeled seat that is probably the height of a footstool or something, and you just roll around on this hardwood floors, pulling fabrics. It’s like a giant quilt shop, but only one yard cuts and a lot more variety in the fabrics that you have. So, it’s just this massive assortment of fabrics. It’s a dream job.
Carolina Moore:
Sounds incredible. So, you’re literally rolling around in the fabric.
Daniela Stout:
Yep.
Carolina Moore:
Picking things-
Daniela Stout:
Literally, so they’re all beautifully folded. I think one yard or two yards, they’re all beautifully folded, so you can see a good chunk of it, but they have that very satisfying… Have you ever picked up folded fabric or you have a stack of fabric that’s all folded exactly the same way? I love that, and you just move it around and it has a very satisfying sort of splat as it hits the table. Do you know what I mean, or am I the crazy one?
Carolina Moore:
No, exactly.
Daniela Stout:
So, it’s a room full of that, and then you lay them out and you see how the colors look and how you like it, usually 20 prints or 40 prints, and I usually go in with a palette in mind, maybe something I have collected from a shirt that I was wearing the other day, or some finished goods that I picked up at Target or something that I just like the colors together. So, I’ll go in with that palette and then pull as best we can to come up with an arrangement of fabrics that sort of mimics that look.
Carolina Moore:
That tells the story?
Daniela Stout:
Yeah, and you know because I’m sure you’ve picked fabrics, both working in a quilt shop and all of the great work you do. If you make a change to one fabric, you might have to make a change to four fabrics because there’s just a little shift that changes everything.
Carolina Moore:
They don’t always play nice. You think they might, but you get all those fabrics in a room together, they don’t always play nice, and sometimes they play way better than you thought.
Daniela Stout:
That’s true, and you might pull in one that you’re like, “Oh, this is it,” and then you put it with the others and you’re like “No, this isn’t it, but this might be the new direction that I need. Now, the other one doesn’t work.” It’s the same thing as pulling fabrics in the quilt shop, except it’s these chunky cuts rather than bolts of fabric, and it’s far more options because at least in my quilt shop, we can’t carry that many options.
Carolina Moore:
[inaudible 00:30:38].
Daniela Stout:
No, wow. So, it was super fun, but I tell you, they’re in New York City and going up there… Because I’m in San Diego, so I fly over there and I could maybe in one day do three lines. By the end of it though, I was exhausted.
Carolina Moore:
Sure. Your eyes are just overwhelmed, eyes and your brain, yep.
Daniela Stout:
So by the end, it was just absolutely exhausting. It was a fun ride. It was another one of those the door opens a little bit and I’m like, “Let’s see, let’s go through this and see what happens.” So designing fabric was neat, and then I got to design the quilts to go with that fabric, and I got to do it all from scratch, so it was very fun.
Carolina Moore:
I love fabrics that are designed by or curated… Other curator design really doesn’t matter to be, but by someone who understands quilting and understands, I’m going to need some lights, I’m going to need some darks, where are my values, where’s my pop of color, where’s my secret little surprise in here?
Daniela Stout:
Yes, and I tried really hard to find one fabric that could be that border fabric or that starter fabric that not every collection, especially if it’s a basic line, it’s missing that one that pulls it all together. So, I really tried hard to have that one that pulled it all together.
Carolina Moore:
Now, you mentioned COVID and having a quilt shop during COVID, I’m sure that wasn’t easy, but you all had a big pivot where you did Monday night lives.
Daniela Stout:
Yeah.
Carolina Moore:
And you really were able to connect with quilters all over through these Facebook Lives?
Daniela Stout:
Yeah, the Facebook Live was probably the thing that saved us looking back on it. At the time, everybody was in a state of, what’s going to happen? And we did have to close our doors, and so when you lose foot traffic, it’s like, “Oh, man,” but you still have the bills. I had a girlfriend, same girlfriend that did the 100 Strip Clubs at her shop, she called me up and she said, “Are you doing this, CommentSold on Facebook Lives?” CommentSold is the third party app that lets you do a shopping cart thing during the live broadcast. And I said, “No, I’m too tired.” And she said, “You’re doing it now.” “Oh, okay.”
Carolina Moore:
What a good friend.
Daniela Stout:
Actually, she’s the best. It is that kick in the butt that I needed. If you’re in your own bubble, sometimes you’re not challenged. You can just stay status quo. So, I had to learn it, cameras, I had to learn lighting, I had to learn broadcasting. The very first one that we ever did, our live broadcast on Facebook, we had the camera [inaudible 00:33:21] the entire broadcast.
Carolina Moore:
That’s awesome. I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing with you because the technical issues, especially on live, it’s so real. It just is.
Daniela Stout:
I know you’re not laughing at me. I know you get this and you can laugh at that, that is hilarious. And then we had to learn that if somebody was holding the camera to do any videotaping and by the camera, I mean the phone.
Carolina Moore:
Yes.
Daniela Stout:
If somebody was holding the phone, they couldn’t talk.
Carolina Moore:
Because they’re loud.
Daniela Stout:
Oh, so loud, and we were having a good time. So, there was a lot of loud laughter. So you learn, even now, we’re like, “Okay, we can’t be loud by the microphone.” Like I said, you do learn, and we have a program that helps run our live broadcast, giving us the ability to have multiple cameras at the same time or different times.
So, we can have a straight on camera at us, or we can have an overhead camera to show a demo, or we can have another camera off to the side. Well, all of that is done in software, and it’s a free software, but we didn’t know how to use it. So, I had a customer who was not working because she worked for live productions for the schools, and schools were shut down. So, she would do a lot of the performance stuff, and I’m like, “Hey, do you want to help us with this and learn along the way?” She’s like, “Okay,” so she’s still doing it for us to this day.
Carolina Moore:
That’s fantastic. I’ve met her too, she’s really awesome.
Daniela Stout:
It was challenging, it was scary, it was uncomfortable, but as a business owner, it was oddly a lot of fun because we were forced to pivot, to come up with new ways, and to reach out in different ways. So for me, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, it was the ultimate challenge, and in a way, it was a lot of fun, but it was a difficult time.
Carolina Moore:
For all of us, for sure.
Daniela Stout:
And emotionally a difficult time, but the Facebooks also let us connect with our customers because we could interact, because they can make comments on that live feed so they can hear from us, and then they can also comment to us and we can reply back to them. So, I think it helped make the world a little less lonely for all of us.
Carolina Moore:
It made the world feel small again instead of isolated all in our corners of this giant world, for sure.
Daniela Stout:
Yeah.
Carolina Moore:
I remember watching the lives and laughing along with you all and just you all had a good time, it was fun. But what’s next for you?
Daniela Stout:
I would really love to help develop our… We have a YouTube channel, Cozy Quilt Designs, and another one for Cozy Creative Center, and I want to get more content up there. So my goal is to get there, add some more content, and reach some more people. We’ve got a lot of things. You talked about how fun it is to share demos or to learn about stuff. There’s a lot of stuff that we just know because we’ve learned it over the last 20 years of this tool, that tool, this technique, that technique, and I think it’s good content for YouTube.
So, that’s kind of the next thing that I want to focus on. Plus, I got a whole bunch of patterns in my head. I’d love to get them… I’d love to do the steps that it takes to write a pattern. You got to design it, you got to do the math, you got to write it, you got to test it, then you got to publish it. So for some of it, the design part is done, for some of it the math part is done.
Carolina Moore:
So many steps to get to a point where other people can get to enjoy it, which is the final step that we want. I know my favorite is always when people send me pictures of what they’ve made with my designs.
Daniela Stout:
I love that too.
Carolina Moore:
Just the opportunity to help other people get to be creative, it’s just a gift.
Daniela Stout:
I love hearing back from people who have made a quilt and send it with a thank you, “Thank you for making such a great pattern, such clear directions,” because I have the desire to create and write, to do… I love math. The whole process of it. I love the math, I love the design, I love the writing, but not everybody has that love or desire. So, when they take one of our patterns and they turn around and they find their own joy and their own comfort by using my pattern, that is such a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling, I love it.
Carolina Moore:
So, I know that your world was rocked fairly recently, and for so many of us that love you so much, our world as well, when you had a really unexpected diagnosis.
Daniela Stout:
Yes, during COVID, I felt something abnormal in my lower abdomen and went in to see the doctor, and it turned out it was ovarian cancer and not just ovarian cancer, stage three, possibly stage four. So, not only were we working through COVID and working through the business, my husband and I and my family now had the cancer fight on our hands, which has been quite a journey. That was almost three years ago, squarely two and a half years ago, lots of ups and downs. It was a total shock. So you know what, Carolina, if everybody could just be aware of the symptoms of ovarian cancer, getting diagnosed earlier is everything.
I’m lucky to be here, being diagnosed at stage three, possibly stage four, a lot of things have gone my way. And so, I am very lucky to be here, but if I had been fortunate enough to be diagnosed at stage one, I’d be over the battle, but I’m not, I’m still in the fight right now, and don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to still be fighting because at one point, one of the doctors said, “This cancer is going to take your life,” and referred me to hospice. That was two years ago, so I said, “No.”
Carolina Moore:
Have you met me?
Daniela Stout:
Oh, thanks for that. I found new doctors who had a little more faith and took a gamble in doing some surgery to remove the bulk of it, and thank God I did do that. Didn’t take his word for it because he was done with me, he wrote me off. I got a call from hospice the next day as if I was going to check in and check out, and I said… The woman was so kind. She’s like, “Hi, it’s Sue. I’m calling from hospice. I got a referral. Didn’t want to call you yesterday. I know it was a tough day.” And I said, “Sue, I don’t really want to talk to you.”
She said, “I wouldn’t want to talk to me either.” I said, “Sue, I’m not ready for this, so I’m going to find other ways, so I don’t think I need you just yet.” And she said, “That is totally fine. I’m going to close out this referral and just know that you can call me whenever you need me again,” and she was the antidote of kindness to my doctor, who we refer to as Dr. Buttonhole, which is a euphemism for butthead, which is the kind words for what we actually call him. So, it’s been quite a thing, and it’s been a lot of ups and downs, but I did find doctors who were fantastic, took a chance, believed in me, and are fighting for me, which is all the difference.
Carolina Moore:
Well, I’m so glad to have you here. You have a great email newsletter that you send out and that I love reading, and you have sometimes life updates. And I remember fairly early on there was a comment about know your body, know what’s going on, and ask more questions. That autonomy of it’s our body and we can make these decisions was really a powerful message for me.
Daniela Stout:
Well, I’m glad to hear that because as it was in the time of COVID, the doctors didn’t want to see patients. They wanted to do everything sort of by video, by call, and the first doctor I spoke with and complained about, I think I had blood in my urine, which I think now may have been unrelated, but it may have been divine intervention. It gave me an absolute reason why I needed to call. So, I called the doctor and she said, “It’s probably just a urinary tract infection. Let’s get you on my antibiotics, and then let’s do a urinalysis,” so this is all by phone. Did that, got the urinalysis results back, and it showed something was in the urine, protein in the urine or something and… No, it didn’t show that. It did not show that, which would’ve been a UTI.
So, I called back because nobody reached out to me. I had to call back and say, “It’s not a UTI, there’s something else.” And I got a little bit of a runaround, and I’m going to kindly blame the fact that they just didn’t want patients in, and then I pushed and pushed and finally got to see a doctor that was not my doctor, and went in, and the only appointment they could give me was on my birthday, but I took it because I’m not going to wait any longer, and the doctor just pushed a little bit on my abdomen and said, we need to get you to get a CT scan, preferably today, turned to the nurse and said, “Let’s get her in for a CT scan today,” and the nurse said, “Today?” Because you just don’t do that, it just doesn’t happen that way.
And he looked at her and she went, “Okay, today,” and I think that’s when I knew. So, I went into the hospital and I was a walk-in, so I had to wait a very long time, and it was a very cold waiting room, so I was kind of pacing the halls just to keep warm. And I got a phone call later on that day, and it was my actual primary care physician, and she said, “It looks like it is something very suspicious for ovarian cancer. We’re going to need to do more tests.” So, on my birthday is when I found out, poor me, but it is what it is.
Carolina Moore:
It’s an auspicious day regardless.
Daniela Stout:
Yes, but then it was, as I mentioned, lots of ups and downs and a doctor that didn’t believe I could do it, didn’t believe I was going to be saved or live very long, and then doctors that did… And at the same time during my fight, so I was doing chemo, chemo, chemo, and then I was supposed to have surgery and then chemo, and he said, “No, we won’t do the surgery.” Well, during the chemo, my son and his wife got pregnant.
Carolina Moore:
Yay.
Daniela Stout:
So if you did the math, I shouldn’t have lived long enough to see that little guy born, but he was born a day after my birthday and two days later I was holding him, so-
Carolina Moore:
Aw, no way.
Daniela Stout:
That picture actually is usually my Facebook profile picture is me holding this little guy, and I should have been, according to the other doctor, dead about four months before that.
Carolina Moore:
Nope.
Daniela Stout:
So, it was just a day after my birthday, so we kind of share birthdays.
Carolina Moore:
That’s fabulous. I love that.
Daniela Stout:
My little grandson. He’s not so little anymore. They get big, Carolina.
Carolina Moore:
I have an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old. I’m not the grandkid stage yet, one day. My 14-year-old has been taller than me for a couple years now.
Daniela Stout:
They do, they grow up. Even if you try to hit them on the head to keep them from growing, they still grow.
Carolina Moore:
My phone did one of those reminders where it’s like, “Let me show you pictures from eight years ago and nine years ago,” and some of them were little video clips of his little kid voice because he doesn’t… Oh, all right, now I’m going to be crying all over again. Is there anything else that you want to share with us before we head out?
Daniela Stout:
I made the decision to go into business as a business decision. We wanted to see if we could do it, how much fun it would be. I had no idea how wonderful the quilting world was. Remember, I’m self-taught, I was not part of the guild, I didn’t take any classes, so I lived in my own little bubble. I knew quilts were wonderful and cozy and fun, but I didn’t know how great the people in the industry was, and it’s been a fantastic 20 years, sharing it with people that are usually givers. Most quilts, they’re making a quilt to give to somebody else, people who are creative. So, I feel very lucky and blessed to have landed in this industry, and working with people like you.
Carolina Moore:
You shaped a lot of my career, so there’s a handful of people and you’re definitely… I don’t know the index finger or the thumb, which one’s most essential, but definitely, yes, you really helped me launch my pattern writing career.
Daniela Stout:
Well, that’s very sweet, but I think even if I wasn’t here, you’d do it because you’re just that sort. You just have ideas and you’re going to go for it and share it, and I think that’s fantastic, and I think that’s a lot of what this industry is about is ideas and sharing, and then the idea that we can make a business out of it, that’s a bonus.
Carolina Moore:
For sure. Where can everyone find you? So, you have a brick and mortar shop here in San Diego?
Daniela Stout:
Yep, Cozy Creative Center in El Cajon, which is east of San Diego, and then we also have a website, cozyquilt.com, and then we have two YouTube channels. One is really a fledgling, but our main YouTube channel is Cozy Quilt Designs again, and that is presentations of our strip club patterns and a couple of sew-alongs. I did a sew-along during COVID, which was amazing that just as a gift I gave away steps to one of our strip club patterns. One step at a time for a limited time only, and the response was fantastic. And once again, it was that connection because now they had a project to work on.
It was all stash busting, so they didn’t need anything else. Many people were sort of locked in their sewing room and some people did amazing, beautiful quilts out of it, and the thank you notes that I’ve gotten have been heartwarming because it is that connection again, and we’re lucky that we have that. So the YouTube channel, Cozy Quilt Designs, and then we also have Cozy Creative Center as a YouTube channel, which is more about demos and products and things that we sell in the quilt shop, not so much the pattern design work.
Carolina Moore:
Fabulous. All right, I’ll make sure that all those links are in the show notes as well. Daniela, thank you so much for your time today and sharing your story and for all the gorgeousness that you’ve added to this quilting community.
Daniela Stout:
Oh, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate being in your company and everything that you do.
Carolina Moore:
Thank you.
Daniela Stout:
See you.
Carolina Moore:
Friends, that’s our episode for today. I hope you loved it as much as I loved having this conversation. Remember that you can find all the details that we talked about in the show notes, and those are all at ilovenotions.com, and make sure to leave this podcast a review in your favorite podcasting app. Leaving it a review will let people know that maybe they should listen as well, and it will help the podcast algorithm show this podcast to other people who love Notions just as much as we do. Friends, that’s all I have for you today, but I will see you right here real soon. Bye for now.
