Highs and Lows of Business Transformation with Stephanie Soebbing, Episode #37
You can also watch the episode and watch me whipping up Zuchini Ravioli in the introduction here:
Click Here to find Quilt Addicts Anonymous, Stephanie’s website. Stephanie recently expanded to create a full scale quilt shop which is open five days a week and carries a wide range of beautiful fabrics.
Stephanie was a bit tired during this interview because she just got back from fall quilt market. She drove to Texas, set up a booth, then drove back home and had to immediately get back to work in her quilt shop. Talk about exhausting!
She also had a lot to share about her business transformation, the hardest part being a terrible mistake her accountant made with filing papers for her business and incorporation. I completely agree with Stephanie – paying for the excellent help of a bookkeeper and tax accountant is worth the money. As soon as you can afford to take those tasks off your back, do it!
Stephanie loves using data to help her make decisions in her business. Her earlier podcast episode was about using Google Analytics to track your income.
She and her husband signed a 2 1/2 year lease on the building she’s renting for her quilt shop. In 2018, she will be able to calculate the profit of her online business, wholesale sector, and brick and mortar quilt shop and decide if keeping the physical store is worth it.
Opening the storefront requires much longer hours, plus several employees. Stephanie mentioned in the podcast her worry that her shop is just a pretty warehouse – meaning it’s mostly a holding space for fabrics and merchandise that are selling more online.
No matter which way you slice it, running a quilt shop is a lot of work so make sure to support your local quilt shops during the holiday season!
Now for a few updates around the house….
You have just two more days to preorder a copy of Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day. This book comes with seven fun quilt patterns you can piece and machine quilt with the thirty walking foot designs shared in the book.
Three of the quilts from the book will be our projects for the 2018 Machine Quilting Party! Click Here to check out the schedule and materials lists.
This book was an awesome experience to write and I challenged myself to learn photography for this project so we could include dozens of in-progress photos so you can see the real quilts on the machine. I’m so pleased it’s finished and ready for you to learn more about this wonderful form of machine quilting.
Click Here to preorder the print edition which will begin shipping out on December 1st.
Click Here to preorder the ebook edition which will email out on December 1st.
During the introduction I was making Zucchini Ravioli, one of my favorite dinners when we have leftover spaghetti sauce to use up. Here’s the recipe:
Zucchini Ravioli
Ingredients
2 Large zucchini
2 c. Ricotta cheese
1/2 c. Finely grated parmesan cheese
1 Egg, lightly beaten
1/4 c. Fresh mint or basil leaves, finely sliced into ribbons
Salt and pepper to taste
1 1/2 c. Spaghetti sauce
1 c. shredded mozzarella
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Peel the zucchini. Next cut ribbons: position the peeler at the top of one side of the zucchini and pull down to create a long, thin ribbon of zucchini. Repeat peeling layers of zucchini until you reach the seeds.
Rotate the zucchini and slice it into ribbons along the other side. Aim to cut steadily and slowly so you end up with a long slice of zucchini. Repeat with all sides of each zucchini so you have a nice stack of zucchini ribbons.
Mix up the ricotta cheese, parmesan, egg, mint or basil, salt and pepper in a bowl.
Arrange two zucchini ribbons vertically together on a plate. Arrange two zucchini ribbons horizontally center on top. Place a scoop (around 2 tablespoons) of the cheese mixture in the middle of the zucchini. Fold the top and bottom zucchini strips to cover the cheese, then the side strips to fully encase the cheese.
Set the ravioli in a buttered dish. Top with the spaghetti sauce and sprinkle mozzarella cheese over the whole dish. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 – 30 minutes or until the cheese is fully melted and lightly brown on the edges.
I would have taken a nice picture of it, but it’s really not a very glamorous dish. By the time I thought about it, we’d already dug in and made a mess of the pretty ravioli. Oh well!
Let me know if you liked seeing me cooking or you found it too loud for the audio. So far I’ve found spinning and hand stitching to be the quietest things for me to do while filming the introduction, but it’s fun to mix it up.
Now a few links to things I mentioned in the intro:
Click Here to find my longarm quilting video when I moved the Grace Qnique to a quilting frame. I’m really excited about quilting on this machine on a frame and sharing the learning process. We’re still working on getting the cameras set up so we get good shots of both the designs and my arms moving.
Yes, I will continue to make videos quilting on a home machine!
Click Here to find the curved seam piecing tutorial for this month’s Quilty Box. You’ll learn how to piece the Soft Edges Quilt really quickly and easily and learn a super fast way to piece curves with glue basting.
I got a great email from Colleen from Canada and here’s the picture she sent me:
Yep, lots of Leah Days in the world and I’m happy to see we have a wide range of skills! LOL!
I love hearing from you so please share a picture of what you’re working on as you listen to the Hello My Quilting Friends podcast on Instagram and tag me @LeahDayQuilting so I get to see it!
Whew! That’s it for this week! I’ll be back with another quilting debate next week – polyester or cotton thread?
Let’s go quilt,
Leah Day
Hi Leah. Just a note to say "Thank you" for the "Explore Walking Foot quilting" download which arrived today – the very day that you said it would be available when I pre-ordered it! I've had a quick look through and will make a start tomorrow! Lynne.