How Ruthlessly Handmade Is Using Charity Quilts to Change Lives
Release Date: 12/12/2025
From Hollywood Animation to Quilting: Kristy Kay's Colorful Career Change
Craft To Career
Kristy Kay of With Love by Kristy is a new fabric designer for Moda Fabrics, but she has been in the art world for a long time. For over a decade, she worked in animation and visual development on films including Hotel Transylvania 2, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, and Smurfs: The Lost Village. As a student of art and color, Kristy understands the emotions that color can bring out. Most recently, she teamed up to create fabric collections inspired by the celebrated artist Mary Blair. In this episode, Kristy shares how she moved from creating for Hollywood to quilting...
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Barbie Mills on Pantograph Design, Longarm Quilting, and Growing a Quilting Business
Craft To Career
What if you could see how a pantograph will look on your quilt before you ever load it on the frame? Barbie Mills, longarm quilter and pantograph designer behind The Quilting Mill, joins the podcast to share how she built her business and the tool she created to help quilters choose their quilting with confidence. Barbie has loved sewing since she was a little girl and made her first quilt as a teenager. She studied Family and Consumer Science in college and taught in public schools for seven years before turning her love of quilting into a full time business. In 2012, she began longarm...
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Why Your Email Promos Aren't Selling (Live Coaching Call with Allison Austin of The Kitschy Creative)
Craft To Career
Why Your Email Promos Aren't Selling (Live Coaching Call with Allison Austin of The Kitschy Creative) If you've ever sent a promotional email and gotten silence, or worse, a wave of unsubscribes, this episode is for you. It started with a post in a Facebook group for quilt pattern writers. Allison Austin of The Kitschy Creative shared that despite emailing consistently every week, rotating between tips, personal updates, promos, and blog roundups, her promo emails were getting zero sales and multiple unsubscribes. I asked if she'd be open to working through it together, live, on the podcast....
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The Little Green Bean: A Decade of Pivots, Mentors, and Growth
Craft To Career
What happens when you build a business, then rebuild it, then rebuild it again? In this episode, we sit down with Missy Luukkonen of The Little Green Bean to talk about a decade of growth that looked nothing like a straight line. Missy started out leaving a retail job to create gnomes and burlap products, and has since evolved her business into selling quilt patterns and running a digital membership. Along the way, she's leaned on mentors at every stage, made bold pivots when something wasn't working, and built a business that reflects who she actually is, not just what was trending. We talk...
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From Idea to Industry Staple: How SewTites Built a Product for Quilters
Craft To Career
Quilting is centuries old, so how does a brand-new product become a must-have in an industry that's already full of tools and traditions? In this episode, we sit down with the team behind Sew Tites to find out. SewTites makes magnetic cutting mats and rulers designed to keep fabric steady while cutting, and to make cutting far less painful for quilters with arthritis or hand pain. It's a simple idea on the surface, but one that's become hugely popular in a short amount of time, and the company has more products already out and even more in development. We talk about: How SewTites got started,...
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What Pattern Writers Should Know About Selling with QBPN, with Ruth Erdei
Craft To Career
If you sell digital quilt patterns, you've probably wondered whether a marketplace is worth it, and what actually goes on behind the scenes to make one work. Ruth Erdei joins the podcast to talk about Quilting Books Patterns & Notions (QBPN), the family business she co-owns, and why she believes so strongly in transparency as a business model. Ruth is a serial entrepreneur, designer, and creative business strategist with more than 20 years of experience building businesses across the craft, creative, and e-commerce industries. Her background spans custom cosplay, crochet, digital products,...
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Eli McCann on Writing "Stitched": Quilting, Comedy, and the Drama of a Sewing Circle
Craft To Career
Eli McCann on Writing "Stitched": Quilting, Comedy, and the Drama of a Sewing Circle What happens when a group of older women who quilt together also happen to be full of secrets, rivalries, and sharp opinions? Author Eli McCann joins the podcast to talk about his debut novel, Stitched, a comedic look at a fictional quilting group and all the drama that unfolds within it. Eli is a lawyer by profession and writes a humor column for the Salt Lake Tribune. Stitched is his first novel, and the idea came straight from his own family. His mom has quilted for years and been part of the...
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Building a Self-Sustaining Quilting Business with Jamie Bright
Craft To Career
This week I'm joined by Jamie Bright of Craft a Dream, and what a treat this conversation is. Jamie is a sharp businesswoman with a real gift for marketing, and her path into quilting is not the one you might expect. Jamie did not start out in the quilting world at all. She built her business knowledge in a completely different field first, and then quilting found its way to her. With that foundation already in place, she grew a vibrant, self-sustaining business in the quilting industry, and she's generous about sharing how she did it. In our chat, Jamie opens up about growing her email list,...
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Joshua Dunn on Memory Quilts, Space, and a Quiltmaker Magazine Feature
Craft To Career
About Joshua Joshua Dunn is the quilter and designer behind Lifting and Stitching. Based in North Carolina, he creates modern quilts inspired by the cosmos, where memory, color, and story meet. His first pattern, A Trip Around the Universe, drew on the James Webb Telescope's Cosmic Cliffs image, and his work has been featured in quilt shows. His pattern Snapshot, a memory quilt, appears in the Summer 2026 issue of Quiltmaker Magazine alongside a designer spotlight. In this episode The memory quilt in Quiltmaker Magazine, and the story behind it How quilting keeps Joshua connected to his...
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How Mim Jenkinson Built a Million Dollar Sticker Business
Craft To Career
Mim Jenkinson sells stickers, and she has grown that into a business earning over $1 million a year. In this episode of Craft To Career, Mim opens up about what she sells, how her business has grown year after year, and the choices that made the biggest difference. She talks about the role her courses and membership play in her success, and how learning from people who are a few steps ahead of her has shaped her growth. Mim also shares a recent shift in how she builds her email list. For years she relied on seminars, and she has since moved to a new model that has worked better for sales. If...
info_outlineIn this inspiring episode, Sarah Morris, the creative behind Ruthlessly Handmade, shares the story of how she began hosting charity quilt events that have touched countless lives. What started as a single fundraiser two years ago has grown into an annual tradition, raising money each year for causes close to her heart: Isaiah 117 House and the Trevor Project.
Her passion for helping others shines through as she talks about why she started this movement, how the quilting community shows up in powerful ways, and what’s ahead as she expands her charity events to happen twice a year for two different organizations.
From assembling quilt blocks to purchasing raffle tickets for the finished quilts, quilters everywhere can be part of something meaningful.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
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How Sarah began her charity quilt journey and why Isaiah 117 House is meaningful to her
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The incredible growth of her fundraising efforts over the past two years
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Why quilting has become a powerful avenue for giving back
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How you can get involved in upcoming charity quilt projects
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Details about block-making sign-ups and quilt raffles
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The future of Ruthlessly Handmade’s charity events, including plans to host them twice a year
Get Involved
Quilters can support these charity events in two main ways:
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Sign up to sew quilt blocks for upcoming charity quilts.
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Purchase raffle tickets when the completed quilts become available, all proceeds donated directly to the chosen organizations.
👉 CLICK HERE to join the newsletter and be notified when block-making opens and when finished quilts go up for raffle.
Key Takeaways
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One person with a passion for service can spark a movement.
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Quilting isn’t just a craft—it can be a powerful tool for helping others.
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The quilting community is generous, committed, and eager to give back.
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Sarah’s story is a beautiful reminder of how creativity can create real change.