This month we are introducing our newest National JUKI educator, Sherry Miller, to the JUKI team!
With over 40 years of experience, Sherry began sewing around seven years old with her mother. Moving on to junior high and high school, Sherry began constructing outfits, a hobby she loved and continues to work on today. After turning 16, Sherry worked in a quilting shop and loved the experience! So much so that she would continue to stay on for the next 30 years, becoming one of their very own educators.
When asked about her favorite sewing memory, Sherry fondly looks back at when she made quilts with a Girl Scout troop for a homeless shelter. Seeing the excitement on the girl scouts’ faces as they put the squares together using a sewing machine, and tying them with yarn, was a heartwarming experience. When it came time to donate, the Girl Scouts group invited Sherry when presenting the quilt at the shelter.
While Sherry was working in the quilting shop, she began practicing her quilting techniques. Creating quilts and home decor samples at home for the store gave her confidence to write patterns and eventually teaching classes. It was here Sherry found her passion for teaching others!
“The most very favorite thing about being an educator is the joy on people’s faces when they accomplish something they thought they could never do! I like meeting new people and learning about their styles of sewing. With every person I help, I always learn something new!”
Since joining JUKI, Sherry finds the J-350 Longarm machine to be her favorite! As someone who loves working on free motion quilting and quilting with rulers, these machines have fit her needs each time. We are so excited to have Sherry Miller on board as she continues to teach our JUKI lovers new tips and tricks on their favorite machines.
Meet our new JUKI Designer Ambassador, Kenya Freeman, CEO and Senior Lead Designer of Sylvia Mollie Collections – an American lifestyle brand that embodies bold femininity. Her garments are meant to instill power and confidence to fearless woman! And its’ because of this that Kenya’s motivation to create is simple: this is her purpose.
“It is my calling and my assignment beyond the passion. Knowing what I do is going to change the lives of many after me.”
We are very excited to have Kenya join the JUKI family as a JUKI Designer Ambassador and want to share a tidbit of her story with our JUKI Lovers! So follow along as we share a part of Kenya’s sewing journey.
Inspired by life, Kenya stumbles upon inspiration in her day-to-day activities. From dreams to the seasons, she’s always observing life outside of her home and the people she passes. Situations in life have continued to bring her inspiration, leading to her beautiful bold fashion pieces.
Kenya’s favorite pieces to work on are dresses. From the challenging cuts to the techniques she’s picked up, she looks forward to the pieces that will shine. Using Frixon pens, her favorite sewing trend, she drapes and uses her tool to mark those seams and lines. Her favorite part is heating it and seeing all the marks disappear from her work.
Kenya acclaims her season on Project Runway to be her most significant achievement in her sewing journey. Setting the tone for her future in fashion, Kenya’s life changed. As one of the top 5 finalists, Kenya’s work is loved by viewers. Her popularity quickly rose, and she inspired so many others to work on their skills.
Her love for sewing comes in full form when she sees the final product. It amazes her to see the process from concept to creation. As she continues to grow her brand Kenya’s primary goal is to relaunch her fashion line to sizes 10-20, creating an inclusive atmosphere for all fashion lovers.
Currently, in the process of the product development stage, Kenya is nothing but excited! With a roller coaster of an adventure since she joined the fashion industry, she’s experienced crazy, insane, exciting, devastating, and unforgettable moments. Her advice to sewers is simple, “Keep practicing. Keep practicing. Keep practicing. Never give up. It only gets better with time.”
We hope you enjoyed getting to learn about Kenya as much as we did, JUKI lovers! So join us on our socials and visit us here to keep up with our new friend Kenya and her journey in fashion.
Which of Kenya’s pieces did you love the most? Let us know below!
Join us today as we share a JUKI Halloween projects for your family! Learn how to create our Trick or Treat Bag, a see-through bag perfect for seeing everything your children bring home. With a finished size of 14” x 16”, this bag will carry all those treats home!
Click here to download our Trick or Treat Bag instructions.
Sewing has always been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. When I was young, my mother sewed many of our outfits. We went to a private school, and with some additional help, she even sewed all the students’ uniforms. But it wasn’t just my mother who influenced my sewing journey, my paternal grandmother would sew Barbie clothes for me, which filled me with great delight! Later in life, my aunt helped me make curtains for my first apartment. Eventually, a majority of the women in our family started meeting regularly to either sew group projects or just work on our things. We still try to get together every year!
I didn’t start “seriously sewing” until I transitioned out of the corporate world (back in 2013). I’ve always been a driven and determined person and was convinced that there was more to being a stay-at-home mom than philanthropy and the car rider line. Most of my friends and all of my family knew that I love to sew. I was often asked to make things for people and told to sell my creations. I never really gave it too much thought until our local music Association hosted a craft fair. I decided to put myself out there and get a booth. I made several pillowcases and sold the majority of them at the craft fair. I was so excited about my success that I decided to open an Etsy shop and place the leftover products for sale online. This is how my company, Sew Much Moore In Storebegan.
My Etsy shop was how I initially made money with sewing. I started with pillowcases, then transitioned to bags, and was doing well making custom ID wallets for people on my Etsy shop. During this time, I started a website and learned about blogging through an online course. I created multiple lines of income through affiliate marketing and paid sponsorships. It wasn’t until 2016 that I made my business legitimate. You see, Etsy sent me an email that said they needed either my social security number or my FEIN#. I decided to go ahead and get my business license and things took off from there.
After I went legitimate, I was motivated and decided to give Amazon Handmade a try. At the time, I was using a hand-me-down 1984 Kenmore. This poor machine was on its last leg. I had made hundreds of ID wallets and make-up bags on it. I was constantly sending it in for service, and it just couldn’t keep up. When I opened my Amazon Handmade shop on Black Friday weekend, I made enough money to purchase my first Juki sewing machine. I’ve decided on an industrial sewing machine considering the amount of bags I was making in my commercial business. I purchased the Juki DU-1181N. I decided to get the servo motor so I could control the speed. I learned a great deal about industrial machines and even wrote a blog series which can be found here.
I found great success with my JUKI industrial, so it was an easy decision to purchase additional JUKI machines like the JUKI TL-2010Q straight stitch sewing machine. This is hands-down my favorite machine to sew on! I can easily piece my quilts, make most bags and even do some free motion quilting. It sews like a dream! And because I love free motion quilting, I added a JUKI J-350QVP as well. I occasionally quilt other people’s quilts, but because my long arm is currently on a table (and not a frame) I mostly just quilt my quilts with my J-350QVP. One of my business goals is to transition my long arm sit down to a frame and add the automation package. Both my kids are still in the house so until they fly the coop, I don’t have the real estate in my home for a longarm business right now. I’m also learning more about making garments so it only makes sense that I have a JUKI serger and cover stitch combo, MO-735. I bought these as gifts for my Mom and love to use them when I visit her. My mom still loves to teach me new things since sewing garments is something that I am still learning more about.
Speaking of sewing lessons… In 2017, I decided to add sewing lessons to my business! I was already contracted with a local quilt shop to teach monthly lessons to a kids club. I enjoyed working with the kids and decided to offer classes in my home for the local community. We don’t have a large space for group sewing, but we did manage to gather around the dining room table with our machines and learn about quilt piecing, bag making, and many other valuable sewing lessons. I continue to teach sewing and quilting through my videos and offer classes to guilds and quilt shops as well. To learn more about my lectures and and in-person workshops, you can visit my website here.
2017 was also the year that I was nominated for the Vice President of programming for the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild. During my two years of service, I had the opportunity to learn more about being a professional in the industry. I gained experience including contract negotiations, learning what a professional is worth, and the pleasure of getting to know so many inspiring creators in the industry. I was also pleased that the membership of the guild experienced tremendous growth during my years of service. I believe it had a lot to do with the talent we acquired for lectures and workshops. I also believe our guild was more successful in gaining new members and filling most sewing workshops because of the marketing efforts for the guild. My experience with Facebook pages, groups and events provided maximum exposure for our guild members and for potential members as well. We grew so much that we had to find a new place to meet as most meetings were “standing room only” and many workshops would sell out quickly.
I was getting comfortable with social media by this time and started engaging my audience through these platforms. By this time, my business had a weekly newsletter, a Pinterest marketing strategy, a social media schedule, patterns and products offerings on my WooCommerce website while still maintaining my Etsy and Amazon Handmade presence. I even started a custom t-shirt quilt business as well! With all these things going on, I decided it was time for a YouTube channel! This was a pretty good learning curve because I didn’t know much about editing videos. Fortunately, iMovie made it pretty simple and with the help of Google, I was able to start producing video tutorials. This new format helped reach a new audience and brought additional traffic to my website, which was now hosting advertising for yet another line of income to my business.
Fast forward to 2019, and I was sharing every day on my Instagram stories. I would constantly get questions about my sewing business. These questions inquired about how I managed everything that I was doing, and it made me feel happy and excited to help other people do the same thing. I never thought about adding coaching to my business until I learned more about producing my online courses. I learned how to create my business by online learning, so it only made sense for me to create my own coaching company.
The Creative Day Job began in 2020 and it currently hosts multiple online courses that serves Creative Entrepreneurs (mostly in the sewing and quilting industry). I love to help sewers and quilters that want to turn their hobby into a business by navigating the technology and overwhelm so they can start earning income from their craft. If I were to give a piece of advice to someone about starting or creating their own sewing/quilting business, it would be this, “just get started.” There’s always going to be something to overcome or some obstacle that might get in your way, but if you just get started and keep moving forward you can do it also! To learn more about the Creative Day Job, you can visit my website here.
I truly believe there is Sew Much Moore In Store for myself and my journey with the sewing and quilting industry. I love to help people with their sewing and quilting projects and I love to help people overcome their creative business obstacles. I especially love the JUKI brand because with the help of their machines and technology, my work has become more productive and enjoyable!
It’s National Sewing Month, JUKI Lovers! In 1982, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed September as National Sewing Month, “in recognition of the importance of home sewing to our Nation,” however, there are so many forms of home sewing! Between embroidery, garment sewing, home décor, quilting, and more, there is no shortage in your options for how to create.
Today, we wanted to celebrate one of the many ways you sew, quilting! A complex sewing category that so many enjoy, quilting is such a popular form of sewing that all types of fabrics, notions, sewing machines and accessories have been created to make quilting more fun for you! That is why we put together our top five quilting accessories for you.
Look below as we go over our top accessories that promise to make your quilting experience a better and more enjoyable time each time you use them.
Quilting Foot
Included with our longarms and beloved J-150QVP, our Quilting Foot is a must-have when quilting! Used for free-motion sewing and ruler work, the quilting foot has a distance of ¼” (6.5mm) from the needle entry point to the outer edge. Create beautiful quilts or home décor with your quilting foot.
Open Toe Foot
Are you working on small designs and need more visibility? Look into our Open Toe Foot! Open at the front so that the needle area is easy to see, this presser foot is useful for quilting small designs or anytime visual of the needle area is needed. Use this the next time you’re creating intricate designs on your quilt and home décor for a cleaner finish!
Glide Foot
When it comes to working on three-dimensional projects or working with applique, it’s best to use our Glide Foot! A bowl-shaped foot is intended to be used for quilting when gliding along with applique and other three-dimensional embellishments. Perfect for when you’re creating accessorized quilts and adding beautiful embellishments like ribbons!
Couching Foot
Use unusual and fun threads the next time you’re quilting with our Couching Foot! Used for sewing decorative thread, yarn, and much more, this set includes two different sizes of couching foot. If you have thick threads that do not fit in a needle, textured thread that would shred, decorative cords, yarn, or trims; all these can be sewn with this accessory in your arsenal! Use this accessory the next time you want to elevate your quilt.
Rulers
Use your quilting ruler as a template when stitching designs! By combining basic lines and shapes, you can create various patterns that will wow you and your loved ones. Be sure to use your ruler together with the presser foot! There are different options on what shapes you can choose to work with that will help you create those designs you are thinking of. Look into our JUKI ruler sets that come with five different rulers giving you a vast array of ways to create patterns.
It’s important to have the right tools when you need them! That’s why we recommend looking into what accessories your machines can have on hand. The next time you’re starting a quilt, think of what different accessories you have and how you can use them on your next project!
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