My name is Alicia. I am married to a wonderful Christian man, we have 3 kids and live in central Florida. I am a middle and high school teacher by degree but became a stay at home mom 8 years ago when my 1st child was born. God has been gracious and given me the opportunity and blessing to be able be home with all three of my kids. I am also licensed real estate agent in the state of Florida. Somewhere along the way I also started interior design school but never finished. My mom likes to say that I am a jack of all trades and a master of none. She says it in jest because she knows that I can do anything that I put my mind to. So where in the world does embroidery come in? One morning I sat in my Sunday School class and listened to my teacher speaking about having a passion for Christ and whatever it is that He has called you to do. I knew what passion was-I once had passion for teaching and coaching. In my 20's I was teaching and coaching competitive high school cheerleading and I knew that he had called me to do just that. Now here I was 10 years later and I didn't have a passion for anything other than my family. I knew that I didn't want to go back to teaching but I would surely have to do something once my kids were all in school. You see my husband is a high school teacher and football coach and while we have drastically adjusted our lifestyle to fit our 1 paycheck budget I knew that we couldn't do that forever. Let me add that this 1 paycheck journey has been a great one. God has blessed us in so many ways and has provided for us so much more than we could have ever imagined. We live in our mortgage free house with 3 very healthy children and have never materially lacked in anyway. So back to embroidery- That was a God thing too!!!
Basically after that Sunday school class i began to pray that God would give me a passion for something. My friend brought me a pillowcase dress from MS and I looked at it and thought, "I can make this". I began to make dresses for my at the time 2 year old. At church I received comment after comment and that's when it hit me, I needed to sell my dresses. I began to do so but of course the "wanna be" southern girl (you know south and central Florida aren't really "southern") that I am now needed to add a monogram to the dresses. After spending $300 in 2 weeks paying someone to applique and monogram my dresses (not all for my daughter- some were samples and others were orders) I realized that in order to make this dress thing profitable I was going to have to do my own monogramming. I began my research. I emailed a girl that at the time was simply the person from which I bought my daughters hair bows. I knew that she not only made bows but monogrammed as well. To really condense this story this is how the events chronologically took place
1. I (in Florida) email Jessica (in MS) for direction in buying a machine. I explain that i am not ready to spend thousands of dollars . while i would have loved the big 6 needle machine that just wasn't feasible.
2. she tells me that she just got the big machine and is selling her Babylock Ellure.
3. I say great I will buy it
4. she ships it, teaches me (over the phone) how to use the machine
5. teaches my how to use Embird
6. teaches me how to applique
and now I am set to go. I start to monogram anything that I can fit in that hoop- OH IT WAS SOOOO MUCH FUN. I remember just sitting there staring at the machine while it embroidered. I would stay up until 2 or 3 am everyday sewing. I would wake up early with the excitement and anticipation to make something new.
7. fast fwd 4 months the Babylock starts to give me problems and as a result i am getting frustrated having to make things over and i am turning orders in to customers late because the machine is constantly being serviced. A few hundred dollars and many frustrated hours later my husband say "just get yourself the big machine". I didn't think that i could financially justify it. I wasn't selling enough to cover the cost of that machine. He convinced me to buy it, primarily because he was sick of the grouchy wife I would become every time I messed up a shirt or dress .
8. In comes Jessica again- at this point my bow lady had become my embroidery buddy. early in our embroidery parasitic relationship (i say parasitic because i was totally feeding off her with nothing to offer her in exchange) I came to the conclusion that she was a Christian. That alone created a bond. It is so neat to see how God brings people into our lives.
This amazing woman (she is an amazing wife, mother, balances her business, her husbands business, cooks, keeps her house and NEVER complains) negotiated the price on my pr-620 machine, had them throw in the stand and the fast frames, took my check to them and had then had them mail the machine to me . Now not only had she taught me everything I knew about embroidery but when she realized that the machine would cost me few thousand dollars more in Fl. she offered to negotiate and buy it for me in MS. And she did great, she saved me about $3,000-$4,000. Oh i forgot she even got them to throw in Monogram Wizard.
9. so here she went again- she taught me to use the pr-620 over the phone.
What was so neat is that the owner of the local monogram store was moving to north Alabama and she closed her store 2 weeks after I got my new machine. God is sooo Good!! I picked up some of her business (store was only a mile away from my house).
now fast fwd a few years- Jessica has become a great friend. I still have never met her in person but we talk daily (at least 1o times a day). We have come to the realization that we are obsessed and have a fetish for appliques. Every time our favorite applique websites listed a new applique we were there to buy it. oh - and if they were on sale forget about it. It truly became an obsession that we couldn't control. We would buy and never stitch them out (no one has enough customers to match up to the number of appliques that we own) In one of our many conversations and on various occasions we realized that we were addicted to appliques and we needed to learn to digitize or we were going to go broke. I bought the program and learned 1st and then motivated her to do the same.
You will meet Jesica very soon - she has some really cute designs.
I enjoy making my dresses but God again opened another door. After creating applique designs for myself I decided to list one on Etsy to see what would happen. Little did I know that this was another avenue that God would use to grow my business. The digitizing path is one that doesn't require me being enslaved to my sewing studio. I can create designs in car line, before bed, in the morning before the kids wake up, etc... And now that I have someone to test my designs I can spend even more time with my family.
I will be opening my website store very soon- It is currently under construction but the website address will be www.AppliqueFrenzy.com
