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...
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Niching Down and Standing Out: Helene of Scandi Quilts on Growing a Quilt Pattern Business
Craft To Career
What does it look like to grow a quilt pattern business when you lean fully into your roots and design what you genuinely love? In this episode of the Craft To Career Podcast, Helene of Scandi Quilts shares how her business has grown since taking the Quilt Pattern Writing Course. Helene has built a beautiful niche around Scandinavian-style quilts, and she's seen real growth in both her sales and her email list along the way. In our conversation, she opens up about what's actually working for her business right now. Helene shares the role on-brand photography has played in her growth, and how...
info_outlineMim 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 you want to grow your own creative business, Mim's story is full of lessons you can apply. Come get to know Mim, her sticker business, and the thinking behind how she keeps it growing.
About Mim
Mim Jenkinson is a sticker making educator who has taught more than 20,000 crafters to make stickers using Cricut, Silhouette, and Canva. She started making stickers at home in 2016, built a five star shop, and now runs a creative education business that earns over $1 million a year.
In this episode
- What Mim sells, and how the pieces of her business fit together
- How her courses and membership became central to her success
- Why learning from people ahead of her has been a driver of her growth
- The pivot from seminars to a new model for building her email list, and why it has worked better for sales
- The habits and decisions that keep her business growing year after year
A few takeaways for your own business
- Growth often comes from learning openly from others, not figuring everything out alone
- Courses and memberships can create steady income and deepen your relationship with your audience
- When a list building strategy stops serving your sales, it is worth testing a new approach
Connect with Mim
- Website: https://www.mimjenkinson.com/
- Free Sticker Making Starter Kit: https://www.mimjenkinson.com/
guide - Free Sticker Starter Class: https://www.mimjenkinson.com/
freeclass - Secret Sticker Society (membership): https://www.mimjenkinson.com/
sss - Business coaching: https://www.askmim.com/
unstuck/ - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
mimjenkinson - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/
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