Heather Snow – Purple Hobbies

Heather Snow is the mastermind behind Purple Hobbies, family owned and operated business.  You’re probably familiar with some of their fabulous notions, like the BladeSaver Thread Cutter and Magnetic Pin Cup. Heather creates all of their innovative designs with her sons.

Purple Hobbies has embraced 3D printing to make fabulous quilting notions! They have an entire “farm” of 3D printers that make their products, and the most popular products become 3D injection molded overseas to keep up with demand.

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Heather as we learn about so many of her fantastic notions!

Show Notes:

Check out all Heather’s fabulous notions at the Purple Hobbies Website.
You can find the Blade Saver Thread Cutter here.
Check out the Purple Hobbies Website here.

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Transcript of my interview with Heather of Purple Hobbies

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.
Today we are here with Heather Snow, and if you don’t know her name, you certainly know her company, Purple Hobbies, and I know you know that because they have so many incredible notions, I’m sure you have at least one sitting on your sewing table right now, but I’ll let you discover those as we go through today’s episode. So let me introduce to you Heather Snow.

Heather:
Hi.

Carolina Moore:
Hi. Tell us about how you got started on your quilty journey.

Heather:
My quilty journey started as being a maker and wanting to create things around me and solve problems. Quilting is a problem solving thing because you are making a gift, you’re making a blanket, you are showing how much you care. My very first quilt was handmade. I took a class, I moved to California straight out of college, and I didn’t know anybody, so I had a lot of spare time, so I saw this quilting class and I thought, I want to do that. I wanted to make something special for my grandparents. And so that was my first quilt, was a handmade quilt, just a little sampler, but it was wonderful and I was hooked.

Carolina Moore:
That’s fabulous. What part of California, by the way?

Heather:
Northern California, we live in Sunnyvale.

Carolina Moore:
Oh, that’s so funny. I lived in San Jose for years and years, and my in-laws live up in the East Bay, Antioch area.

Heather:
I’m originally from Pennsylvania, but I’ve been in California longer than I lived in Pennsylvania, so I think I’m a Californian now.

Carolina Moore:
We’ll accept you, 100%, for sure.

Heather:
Thank you.

Carolina Moore:
I wasn’t born here either though, but still I’ve been here most of my life, so I think so. Okay. So you fell in love with quilting after making that first quilt.

Heather:
Yep. And there are so many different kinds of quilts and so many different techniques, it’s just addictive.

Carolina Moore:
Absolutely.

Heather:
So the way that I started my business was kind of by accident. I have always been quilting in my spare time. I had a high-tech job and quilting has always been a way for me to relax and do something with my hands, do something real instead of theoretical. And I was fortunate enough to be able to leave my high-tech job and right around that time there were a lot of fires here in Northern California, and so I was quilting like crazy. And I was going through lots of rotary blades and making lots of piecing and doing lots of chain piecing, and I just thought, there’s got to be something we can do with these blades, and I really did not like the chain piece cutters that were on the market, and I just thought there’s got to be a way that we can use these blades instead of throwing them away, and the Blade Saver Thread Cutter was born.
The very first sample that I made was, it looked like a little Ferris wheel. It was a little triangle with a little wheel. It was very ugly, but it did have my logo. The logo always was the blade holder. But the whole case, my youngest son is very mechanically inclined and he looked at what I was doing and he said, “Mom, it would be so much better if you made a case for it and had the slot be the thing that makes it stand up.” So it was instrumental in the final design of the Blade Saver Thread Cutter.

Carolina Moore:
That’s fantastic.

Heather:
Yeah.

Carolina Moore:
So you said that you were making a lot of quilts because of the fires. Was that that you’re making them for people who had lost their homes or possessions in the fires?

Heather:
Yes. Yes, absolutely. I was making quilts as fast as I could and donating them, and I still get sad when I saw photos of people in line for quilts. So think about it, you lose your home, you have nothing, and you’re in a hotel and it can’t feel like home because you have nothing that’s your own. And people were standing, they were in these huge long lines, it looked like a Black Friday line, but they were standing there because they were able to choose a quilt and have it be their own so that they could start having some new semblance of home. It breaks my heart to think of people losing everything beyond their control, and it just made me feel good to be able to do something to help because you feel so helpless.

Carolina Moore:
Sure, absolutely. That’s incredible though. That’s phenomenal. And also I think there’s a lot of quilters who can relate to that. Many of us have made quilts for different … or donated quilts, made a quilt and didn’t know where it was supposed to go, and then there was a tragedy and we knew, okay, this is where this quilts supposed to go. This is where it’s supposed to have its life.

Heather:
Yes.

Carolina Moore:
So you decided you wanted to be able to recycle those rotary blades. You came up with a Blade Saver Thread Cutter. Were you just printing it on a 3D printer at that point point?

Heather:
Yes. Yeah.

Carolina Moore:
That’s so clever.

Heather:
Yeah, that’s one of the things when I left my high-tech job, I actually went back to school to learn how to do 3D modeling. And that’s what encouraged me to start the business because suddenly I was able to take the ideas in my head and turn them into real things in my hands. So we’re completely addicted to 3D printing.

Carolina Moore:
That’s fabulous. So I didn’t know which was your first notion. The first notion of yours that I was introduced to was the Blade Saver Thread Cutter. And if people haven’t seen it, we’ll make sure that there are links in the show notes, but it is this ingenious little device, kind of looks like a snowflake that you unscrew, put your rotary blade in, screw back together, and now you can cut all your chains and chain piecing on your recycled or upcycled rotary blade and use all the different edges of it. And then I love the case because you can pop open the case, put the blade portion inside, and now it’s fully protected, not that the blade was exposed, but it’s fully protected of bumping into anything in your bag and you just throw it in your bag to take on retreats or on a sew day with you. It’s so handy.

Heather:
I’m glad you like it. One of the things that was really important to me was to make it so that you couldn’t get your fingers in there. Some of the other cutters on the market have a wide gap and they just made me nervous. So with mine, you can’t, even if you try, you can’t get your finger to the blade, and that was really important to me.

Carolina Moore:
Well, I’m not actually going to try, I’ll totally take your word on it, but it does look like, yes, it’s pretty secure. And then I love that you include a screwdriver right in there. So it’s not like I get this and I want to put my rotary blade in there, I don’t have to go searching for a screwdriver, one that actually fits in the case is included.

Heather:
Yeah. That was an addition after that. We didn’t do that at first because we didn’t know that those little screwdrivers existed, but once we found them, we were very excited to include them.

Carolina Moore:
Yay. And you continue to evolve as people wanted things and as you found things. I love that. So you start out with a Blade Saver Thread Cutter. Was it like a hit right away, everyone loved it, or did it take a little while for it to work its way through?

Heather:
As people saw it, they loved it, but it always takes a long time for people, for the word to get out, and I wanted it to spread through word of mouth. We don’t advertise, and so it means a lot more to me when people say that they have this or their friend told them about it. My main goal is to help people and make sewing and quilting more fun and enjoyable and take away some of the frustrations. So quite honestly, most of my tools were created because I was frustrated about something. I’d be sewing and say, “There’s got to be a better way to do this.” There were many classes I took where I said, “Man, I don’t like this. There’s got to be a better way.
Jelly roll rugs, for example, I took a class to do a jelly roll rug, and the directions were great, but just all the folding and pinning and I just, “Okay, this is just crazy. There’s got to be a better way.” So I created a little clamp that goes on your sewing table and it takes in the batting and the fabric and does the double fold at the same time. So you just pull it a little bit, make sure that it’s straight and stitch it, pull a little stitch instead of having to have to fold it all and clamp it all and then un-clamp it all as you’re sewing.

Carolina Moore:
So was that the next notion? So that’s the Jelly Roll Rug Binding Tool and Five Eighth Inch Binding Maker, right?

Heather:
Right. Actually, the second tool was the Magnetic Pin Cup. And the reason that came about is because I was in an open sew class where everybody can, at our local quilt shop, you sign up and sew whatever you want to work on. The woman sitting next to me had one of the other styles of magnetic pin holders where the pins are all on their side, but she had too many pins, so a lot of them were standing up and every time she reached for a pin, she’d say, “Ouch. Ouch.”

Carolina Moore:
No.

Heather:
Every time. This was a five-hour class. And so I sat there and was like, “Okay, there’s got to be a better way.” And so I made this Magnetic Pin Cup where the magnet, it kind of looks like an ice cream cone, and the magnet is at the bottom of the ice cream cone. So all the pin, the sharp parts are down, and so then when you reach in, you get the safe part, you use your pin, you put it back sharp part down.

Carolina Moore:
And then it has a screw top on top to keep everything secure so you can throw it in your bag and not worry about your pins going everywhere.

Heather:
Exactly. And when you open it up, the pins pop out kind of like a flower unfurling so that you can reach the pins better. So they’re not exactly straight up and down, they’re kind of relaxed and you can grab them easier.

Carolina Moore:
That’s so cool.

Heather:
But the lid was important so that you can throw it in your bag and go.

Carolina Moore:
And I love the story of how it came about. Now, did you ever find that woman again and get her one of those pin cups so she could stop saying ouch all the time?

Heather:
I absolutely would, but I never saw her again. I can’t believe it.

Carolina Moore:
One day.

Heather:
Most of the people that go were regulars, but she was a one-timer. It was a bummer.

Carolina Moore:
Well, I hope that she found it because-

Heather:
I hope so.

Carolina Moore:
… just like the rest of us, she needed that in her life.

Heather:
Yeah. Then I think the next thing we did was the Third Hand Binding Folder, and that came about because when you’re going to bind your quilt, you have hundreds of inches of binding that you need to fold in half evenly. Fold it in half and iron it. And I was always burning my fingers. So I made this little holder, this little clamp that goes on your ironing board. It’s exactly two and a half inches, and it folds your binding in half, and so you just pull it through and you can hold your iron with one hand and then just slowly pull the fabric through and it’s perfectly folded in half, and you just end up with this perfectly folded binding. And after that, I’d said, “Okay, now I’ve got all this binding. What do I do with it?” So then I created a Binding Wheel to roll all the binding on it, so it’s like a gigantic bobbin where you put all of your binding on it. It looks like a Ferris wheel.

Carolina Moore:
Yeah, I was going to say that one really does look like a Ferris wheel to me.

Heather:
Yeah, you put all your binding on there and so you can have extra, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I always seem to over make binding. And so I have lots of little Binding Wheels with some binding on them, just like I have lots of bobbins with some bobbin thread on them.

Carolina Moore:
So you can unspool a binding right off of this Binding Wheel as well really easily, instead of having that pool of binding that sits by your feet with all the pins that have dropped and lint and [inaudible].

Heather:
Yes. So you spool all the binding onto the wheel, and then you set it next to your sewing machine as you’re sewing your binding on, and it just comes right off neatly so it doesn’t have to drag on the floor. Yeah.

Carolina Moore:
So clever.

Heather:
And then people asked me for a clamp for the Binding Wheel. So we have a clamp to hold the Binding Wheel on the side of your ironing board so that you can sort of pull it faster and one-handed wheel it. And with the third hand, it started out with two and a half inches because that’s what I always used for my binding. But customers wrote to me and said, “I would like two and a quarter inches,” and said, “Yeah, I can do that.” So I made a two and a quarter inch version. Then someone else said, “You know what? I’m making this really giant blanket and I want to do a super wide binding. Would you do one that’s four inches?” “Sure.” So we have I think 11 sizes now from one and one eighth, all the way up to four inches and lots and lots of sizes in between. And if anybody wants a size we don’t have, we’re happy to make it. That’s one of the beauties of 3D printing, and because I do all the designs myself, I can make changes so that it can meet customer’s needs.

Carolina Moore:
11 different sizes. I didn’t know that you would need 11 different sizes of binding, that’s incredible.

Heather:
I didn’t either, but that’s why it’s wonderful to customers say, “I need this,” and I say, “Sure, I can do it.” So I would never have made that many, I never would’ve thought you would need that many.

Carolina Moore:
Sure. Okay. So you solved rotary blades and solved poking yourself with pins and saying ouch 700 times in five hours, and then you made binding easier. What’s next on this journey to just revolutionize quilting and make it easier for all of us?

Heather:
Well, I don’t know if I’m revolutionizing quilting, but another challenge I had was keeping track of my pieces when I’m making a quilt and there’s lots of different A, B, C, D, E pieces,

Carolina Moore:
Especially when they’re a half inch different in size and you get the wrong one. Yep.

Heather:
Yes. Sometimes you can’t tell them apart, or sometimes you have some that are mirror images, and so these are supposed to go on this side and these are supposed to go on the right side. So I made quilt block markers, and it’s the alphabet and numbers zero through nine, and there’s a little hole in the top of each one. So for all of your A parts, you put a pin through the A and that way they they’re all held together. And if it’s a really tall stack, I put it on my woolly mat and I just put the pin straight down and that holds all of my parts together, and that way I know which pieces go to which part of the block. And I also use them for my block of the months. So I’ll use the numbers frequently for keeping track of the block of the month blocks. So month one, month two.

Carolina Moore:
Oh, that’s so smart.

Heather:
And then sometimes when there were mirror images, I was doing a Cleopatra’s fan and I was doing it with Batik, which I thought was really smart when I was cutting it. And then when I was piecing it was not so smart because you can’t tell the top from the bottom, keeping track of which was left and which was right was difficult. So I used blue for one set and I used red for the other set, and that way I knew which parts went to which side, and that way I knew which side was up.

Carolina Moore:
Oh, that’s so smart. So not only number coded, but then you can get a couple sets of different colors and now they’re number coded and color coded or letter coded and color coded.

Heather:
Correct. Yes.

Carolina Moore:
So clever.

Heather:
I just find it helps. A lot of my products are for convenience, so I have a thing called a Phone and Notions Holder and this, I have a large Baby Lock machine and it has this wonderful space on top, the lid opens up and it has this wonderful space on top. And so I created this Phone and Notions Holder that has all of the notions that I need when I’m stitching, the seam ripper of course, and some tweezers and brushes and marking tools, but it also has a space to put my glasses and a space to hold my phone up, because I think we’re all addicted to our phone, and that way my phone is right there, but it’s out of my way.
And part of the reason that there’s a space for my glasses is I am nearsighted. So I frequently take my glasses off when I’m sewing and I set them down somewhere and I kept losing my glasses. There’s a find my phone thing with my watch, I can hit the button and my phone will make noise. And I said, “I really need that for my glasses.” My son said, “Well, why don’t you just keep your glasses with your phone?” So that’s where this Phone and Notions Holder came along with the glasses spot, so that you can just have everything all together and then I’m not losing my glasses anymore.

Carolina Moore:
That’s so smart. See, I’m nearsighted as well, but usually I wear contacts and so I need readers all the time to compensate because the contacts mean that I can see distance great, but I can’t see close up with my contacts in.

Heather:
I see.

Carolina Moore:
You can’t just take off your contacts for a minute while you’re looking at something up close.

Heather:
Right. So then you’d have a place to store your readers.

Carolina Moore:
Yeah. My solution is to just buy 12 pairs of readers and have them everywhere, but you can’t do that with prescription glasses quite as easily.

Heather:
Correct. Some of the other notions that I have been working on, again, it’s always, I don’t want to say need-based, but opportunity-based, I’ve been doing a lot of hand sewing. I’ve been doing cross stitch, so I created a little stitch finder. It looks like a picture frame, but it’s magnetic and it goes on your chart so that you can keep track of the little space. It shows your focus of this is where I’m stitching, because I get lost in a chart without something to hold my place. And then of course, I needed a place to put my needle, so I made needle minders. And one of the things that’s really fun about 3D printing is I can actually create things that cannot be manufactured in the traditional manufacturing sense. So my needle minders are also fidget spinners. There’s a mini logo in there with a ring around it, and the logo, actually, if you pinch the logo, the outside rings spin.
And another thing I did with my needle minders is it’s actually two needle minders sandwiched together. So you can use it as a magnetic pin, so you can use it with English paper piecing, you can use it to hold anything together. I actually have one customer who splits them in half and puts them on her wall because she has a magnetic bookshelf next to where she sews, and so she uses it to hold up her scissors, her small snips. So she uses it as a snips holder instead of just a needle holder.

Carolina Moore:
Oh, clever.

Heather:
And then I also, because I was doing cross stitch, I needed a place for all of my cross stitch floss and a place for my little scissors. So I created a little, I call it a hand sewing companion because it can be used for English paper piecing or cross stitch, and the little cross stitch bobbin, the little cards where you put your cross stitch floss fit inside of these, you can fit 10 of them in these boxes and it’s all magnetic. I love my magnets.
And there’s a little scissor box where there’s a hole where your scissors actually just go in the side of this box, so they’re protected. It’s like a giant scissor cover, but it’s magnetic, so you can just slide the scissors out and there’s a lid that holds pins, so you’ve got all the pins that you need. You’ve got a little spot to either hold a thimble or I use mine to put my little snipped threads because when you’re doing hand sewing, you always end up snipping that few inches of extra thread and never know where to put them. So now there’s a little place to put them. And so I’ve got my little grab and go things when I sit in doctor’s offices in waiting rooms, I’ve got all my little notions with me.

Carolina Moore:
It’s so clever the way you’ve built the little compartments in there as well. So they’re almost like stacked compartments inside each other to fit all the things.

Heather:
I was trying to make everything as compact as possible.

Carolina Moore:
You definitely have an engineer’s brain, and we love that when we have these engineer brains creating quilty notions for us.

Heather:
One notion that I never ever would’ve made, but customers begged me, is the ruler stands, quilt ruler stands. So I didn’t want it to be just like everybody else’s quilt ruler stands because when I promised I would make some, I looked at my quilt rulers and said, “You know what? I have a lot of curved quilt rulers,” and when they stack them into a traditional stand, they roll all over the place. So my quilt ruler stands, you have a choice, you can have flat because there are a lot of flat rulers, but there are also a lot of curved rulers. So you can choose the curved version, which has a slight curve in the bottom, so that way you can carry your quilt ruler stand full of quilt rulers, and they’re not going to roll all over the place because they’re cupped in the ruler stand. That’s another thing that nobody else has done or I haven’t seen manufactured that way. It would be very difficult to do that in wood.

Carolina Moore:
Absolutely. And again, it’s one of those, you’re a quilter, this is an actual quilty problem. It’s not just that we need a place to hold our rulers, but what kinds of rulers do we have that would need to be in a stand like this? So smart.

Heather:
Exactly. One other thing that I love about 3D printing is I can offer lots of colors. And so people can pick, instead of just one shade of blue, I think we have six shades of blue and people can choose the size that they want. And with the quilt ruler stands, do you want it to be three inches wide? Do you want it to be five inches wide? Do you want it to be 10 slots? Do you want it to be 20 slots? Do you want it to be flat? Do you want it to be curved? Do you want it to be for six milliliters, quarter inch or eight inch slots? And we build everything to order so that way everybody can have what they want.

Carolina Moore:
So how many 3D printers do you have running at any time to be able to manufacture all these things?

Heather:
We have over two dozen 3D printers.

Carolina Moore:
Oh, wow.

Heather:
Yeah, it’s called a print farm when you have that many printers.

Carolina Moore:
I love that. It’s a notion farm.

Heather:
It is. It is. It’s a notion farm. And yes, I go down and I say, “I have to go check the crop.”

Carolina Moore:
Oh, that’s so fun.

Heather:
It’s important to make it fun.

Carolina Moore:
Okay. You have a notion on your site that is called a Thread Cork.

Heather:
Oh, yes. That’s another thing that was driving me crazy. So many of these threads don’t have a place to stash the end of the thread once you’ve opened it and they get tangled and it drives me crazy. So I made these little Thread Corks and I wanted the top to be cute, so they kind of look like a tulip bud, I guess. And so yeah, Thread Corks I made to solve the messy threads sitting around my sewing room problem.

Carolina Moore:
So they have the little slots that hold the thread then?

Heather:
So the top of it looks like, kind of looks like a cork, and then underneath the part of the cork that would go in a bottle has a hole. So you can kind of picture two legs, and then you put the thread through the legs and then plug the cork into the top of your spool, in the hole where the …

Carolina Moore:
The spindle would go.

Heather:
[inaudible] and the spools.
And it pinches it, so it holds your thread in place. So that’s why I called it a Thread Cork because to me, it’s like a cork. It’s like a bottle stopper.

Carolina Moore:
That’s so clever.

Heather:
And I’m looking at my desk, I have a hanging thread catcher because when you’re sewing, you have lots of little spare threads that need to be put somewhere. So my hanging thread catcher, it looks like a crystal ball almost. It’s got texture on the outside, and there’s a little place to hang your thread snips. So your thread snips are right there, they’re out of your way, but they’re right there, but they’re not on your sewing surface to get knocked over. Because sometimes when I’m sewing, I knock, as I’m rotating what I’m working on, I knock things on the floor, so that’s partly why this came about.

Carolina Moore:
Yes. And then you have to find it and it’s rolled somewhere and you don’t know where it went. Yes.

Heather:
Yeah, it goes underneath my desk and then I find all the other … my son has a fuzzy cat and there’s tumble fur everywhere. You vacuum and five minutes later there goes another bit of tumble fur. It’s unbelievable.

Carolina Moore:
Yes. Longhaired cats.

Heather:
Yes.

Carolina Moore:
Even my short haired cat, she sheds quite a bit. Absolutely. So I think we’ve gone through, I know there’s more, and I’ll definitely have the links so that people can go find the more. I mean, this feels like so many ideas, is it possible that you have more ideas that you haven’t made yet?

Heather:
Oh, yeah. Always. There’s a lot of things. So one of the things I’m looking at right now that is on the site is called a Multi Sized Block Trimmer, that is an acrylic, it’s kind of like a puzzle piece. So instead of just having a five by five ruler and a six by six ruler, there are, I don’t remember how many pieces, but you can do hundreds of different sizes. You can go up to 15 and a half inches by 15 and a half inches square, or you can rearrange, they’re like puzzle pieces, so you can rearrange these puzzle pieces to be rectangles, and you can cut on the inside so you can fussy cut. There are slots to a fussy cut on the inside, or you can cut on the outside to do bigger blocks.
And that came about because I was doing a block of the month where they had you stitch all these pieces together and you ended up with this really wonky shaped thing and you were supposed to trim it down. It was really hard to visualize the block as it was. And so with this frame, I was able to see exactly where I was going to be cutting and what I was going to end up with, because it wasn’t just a simple cut two inches off the outside. It was a wonky shape that got cut into a square. So this tool helps you trim whatever sizes you need.

Carolina Moore:
This is so clever. It’s like build a ruler. You can build your ruler whatever size you need, your square ruler, or you could even make this a rectangle because there’s no reason that you can’t make the left and right side’s the same and then make the top and bottom a different Same.

Heather:
Yes. And I use rectangles a lot for my cross stitch designs.

Carolina Moore:
Oh, yes.

Heather:
We don’t seem to do that many rectangles in quilting, but I mean, sometimes. But I mean, you can obviously do rectangular blocks if you want. So another thing I’m looking at right here, one of my latest quests has been doing bias binding. So I have a whole suite of Bias Binding Clamps. So there’s a bunch of bias binding tape makers on the market where you have to hold it in your hand and pull it along and iron and pull and iron and pull. And it’s another one of those cases of I burn my fingers and get really upset. So I spent more than a year on these to get them just right. And I have one I’m super excited about them. And the quarter inch I’m having so much fun with right now because I’m doing bias binding Christmas lights. So just picture a swirly cable, and I’m doing that with my bias binder and then attaching little Christmas lights on it with applique.
And the thing that I’m really proud of is not only can you easily make your bias binding with this tool because you clamp it on the side, it’s very much like the third hand. You clamp it on the side of your iron, you put the fabric through, you hold the iron down, and you slowly pull the fabric. So you only need two hands, you don’t need three hands. And after you have it folded, after both sides are folded in, you put it through the tool again, and there’s a slot where you can attach the fusible tape. So you can make your own fusible bias binding by attaching the tape, that way you can get the exact color that you want and the exact quality of material that you want.

Carolina Moore:
So for people who have never played with bias binding before, because there’s plenty of quilters who are new to quilting and have made a couple quilts, the really great thing … people talk about bias generally in quilting like it’s a negative because if you have bias in when you’re piecing things, then the pieces can stretch and get wonky, and we don’t want that. But when we’re doing things like attaching a binding, a bias binding has stretch because you haven’t cut it on the grain of the fabric, you’ve cut it across all the grains and so that’s why it stretches. And you can do it around curves, so if you’re curving, instead of doing square corners on quilts, you can curve the corners on quilts. But it’s also great for this fusible bias applique, where you take this bias and you can basically write cursive with it and fuse it on there.

Heather:
Yes. And the key is you don’t actually have to use bias, it’s called a bias binding tool because that’s sort of the industry standard for when you take the two edges of the fabric and fold them in over themselves so that the raw edges are hidden. I like to do a lot of Lori Holt’s applique designs, and she frequently has you using a bias binding tool, but you use straight of grain because you’re doing little chicken legs, and so you’re doing straights. But trying to fold the fabric over so you end up with a quarter inch without raw edges and without burning your fingers is nearly a miracle.
So it was actually, to be honest, it was Lori Holt’s quilt-alongs that got me wanting to make this bias binding tool. But then I also had quilters write to me, because they’re doing quilt as you go, and they wanted really wide ones because they wanted to do, you can use the same theory of you take a wide strip of fabric, fold both edges in, and then you have two clean edges of a fabric strip that you can use to cover up where you join your quilted blocks. So imagine you quilted a block and it’s beautiful, and you quilt another block, and then you sew those two together. You use this binding strip to cover up the raw edges of your quilting.

Carolina Moore:
For your quilt as you go projects.

Heather:
Yes. So I have these bias binding tools. They go from quarter inch, all the way up to someone asked me for four inches to go down to two inches.

Carolina Moore:
Oh, wow. So almost like a sashing?

Heather:
Yes.

Carolina Moore:
Yep. That’s so clever.

Heather:
So a lot of the tools come about because I wanted to do something and some of the others come about because people asked for them.

Carolina Moore:
So you take requests, people can email you, and if there’s a surge of demand, then it might become a thing?

Heather:
Well, I am happy to get emails from people, and it doesn’t require a surge of things. Honestly, I have done quite a few private projects. There’s a woman who makes special kits for women that have had mastectomies, and there’s a special bag that you need to wear to hold everything in place because you have drainage tubes, and these special bags required many hours for her to stitch, and she had very specific dimensions that she needed. So I made a special tool for her. And there was someone else that had a similar medical need project that she is making things to donate, and so I am happy to make tools like that to help people that are helping others. And a lot of these tools save thousands of hours for people that are donating, which means they’re able to be more productive and help more people. So that just makes me very happy to be able to contribute.

Carolina Moore:
That’s incredible. Now, do you ever go to shows and events so people can meet you in person?

Heather:
I love to go to shows and events, but I go as an attendee. I do not go as a vendor. I was just at the Long Beach Quilt Festival and had a wonderful time learning how to do all kinds of wonderful fabric dying. And if I were to have a booth, then I wouldn’t be able to take all these classes, and this is where I get my inspiration.

Carolina Moore:
I was at Long Beach too.

Heather:
I love meeting people, but I’m not a salesperson. Sorry.

Carolina Moore:
Oh no, you don’t need to apologize for that. I mean, I think that great notions sell themselves. And just showing people, okay, this is what it does, and then letting their mind run wild and “Oh, so that means I can do this with it and I can do that with it and it’ll solve this problem?” Yes, it will. Yeah, I was at Long Beach, but also just as an attendee walking around, because the year before I was a vendor there and I didn’t see the show at all. We were allowed to come in early to set up and see the show, but I was so exhausted from 3 days that I never walked the show. I never saw the quilts last year.

Heather:
I’m sure. I got the most beautiful thimble at the Long Beach Show. There’s a woman that, she’s an artisan and she makes beautiful, beautiful thimble jewelry. So yeah, I was very happy to be able to walk the floor and find wonderful finds like that. So I have a new treasure thimble that I never would’ve had if I had been working.

Carolina Moore:
Yes, I spent a fair amount of money at the Long Beach Show as well. It’s really easy to do when you see all the fun things. So you’re working on new projects. How do you decide what’s going to be next in the queue? What’s going to be your next invention?

Heather:
Honestly, it’s whatever is really fun and whatever needs to be fixed. So either it’s something I’m really excited about or something I’m really frustrated about. Is it something that’s driving me crazy, there should be a better way, or is it something that, wow, there’s this new idea? So with the fabric dying classes I took, I did get a lot of ideas for possibilities, but possibilities don’t always turn into products. We’ll see what happens.

Carolina Moore:
Sure. Well, we look forward to seeing those. Anything else you want to add before we go?

Heather:
Just I think quilters are the best people. They have the biggest hearts. They have wonderful ideas. They’re so caring, and I love being a part of this community. I love joining quilters and sewing along with people, and it’s just wonderful. And I encourage people to keep helping each other. And if there’s anything that I can do to help, I am always happy to listen and see if there’s some way that I can help solve someone else’s problem. And it does not have to mean money for me, I do this because I genuinely want to make the quilting world a better place and help make people happy.

Carolina Moore:
I love that. Okay. Where can people find you online so they can see when you come out with your next products and also see all these things? And I’ll make sure that all these links get added into the show notes as well.

Heather:
Our website is purplehobbies.com.

Carolina Moore:
And then on any social media?

Heather:
I’m not really a social media person. I have an Instagram account, but honestly, I don’t really use it. So the website is where we put things, and more often than not, I’m at my local quilt shop sewing with the ladies.

Carolina Moore:
I love that. Well, thanks so much for joining me today. It was such a pleasure having you.

Heather:
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking with 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 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.