From Hobby to Business: How One Quilter Started Teaching Quilting in Just Five Years
- Tori McElwain
- Jul 17
- 7 min read
Hey Tori! Answering Your Digital Marketing Questions for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
In five years, Krista Russell went from "Can you make me a quilt?" to running a long-arm quilting business, writing patterns, teaching classes, and operating a quilt shop out of her home in northern Saskatchewan. She's the kind of person who sees an opportunity and figures it out. If she decides to do something, it gets done.
But five years of building—layering business on top of business, moving cities, scaling on the fly—creates a specific problem for doers: you keep moving forward without stopping to build systems. You're executing so fast you don't have time to design from scratch.
That's where Krista found the Workshops Unleashed book club. Not just for inspiration or community (though she got both), she saw it as an oppertunity for accountability. She needed deadlines and someone checking in while she was literally in the middle of a move.
Listen to the Episode:
What you'll learn in this post/episode:
How Krista went from first sewing machine to four income streams in five years
Why accountability (not inspiration) keeps action-takers moving faster
How to use the book club during a massive life transition
Why structure and deadlines matter more than having it all figured out
How to design a quilt class curriculum from scratch when you've only ever taught existing frameworks
Connect with Krista:
Visit her Website at Timeless Quilt Studio
The Cotton Anniversary That Changed Everything
Krista didn't set out to become a quilter. In the summer of 2021, she and her husband marked their cotton anniversary and she wanted to make napkins from their wedding colors. She couldn't find anyone to make them for her, so she did what a lot of people do: she Googled where to buy a sewing machine. That search led her to a local quilt shop just a block and a half from where they were living.
While Krista looked at machines, her husband walked the shop. He stopped in front of a display quilt and when they headed home, he asked the question that changed everything: "Can you make me a quilt?"
She figured it out. She made him a simple patchwork quilt in shades of green using a Bargello-style technique. And she fell in love with quilting.
Five years later — and I mean five years from that first sewing machine to now — Krista has a long-arm quilting business, writes patterns, runs a quilt shop out of her home in La Ronge, Saskatchewan (in the middle of Northern Canada, where the next big center is two and a half hours south), teaches quilting, and still has a few piano students from her old life. She's also evergreen.
But before any of that worked, she hit a wall.
The Wall: Having Skills but Not Structure
Krista is an action-taker. If she decides to do something, it gets done. So it's not surprising that when she taught piano, when she started long-arming, when she decided to move her family up north to build a quilting community hub — it all happened. But here's what she told me: "I had a hard time designing from the ground up."
All her teaching experience — piano, workshops, community classes — had been built on existing frameworks. She facilitated what was already laid out. Teaching itself she understood. But creating the curriculum from scratch? That felt like "a big scary thing."
That's when she saw a post about the Workshops Unleashed book club in a Facebook group and decided to sign up. The timing was brutal — she was literally in the middle of moving from one province to another. She packed up her house, finished the first book club session in her new house, and came back for more because, as she put it, "it was free and low-risk."
But the real reason she stayed was timing. She was wrapping up her long-arming clients before the move. Her piano students were done for the school year. She was transitioning her quilting business from part-time to full-time and needed to know she could actually teach what she wanted to teach.
"Doing the workshop like it made sense to do that and then knowing that there's an opportunity to teach up here also helped," she said.
The book club gave her something she couldn't build alone: structure. And specifically, the chapter on designing a workshop — breaking it into bite-sized steps instead of one giant scary thing.
"The design the workshop section really helped a lot with that. And doing it with the book club made it go from feeling like this big scary thing to these little bite-sized steps that I could do and all of a sudden I was like, I'm doing this. It actually isn't so hard."
Teaching Quilting: What Stuck With Her (And What She Built Next)
After the book club ended, Krista didn't put the book on a shelf. One thing stayed with her: thinking about what the student needs.
Krista shared that when she designs anything now — a project, a technique video, an in-person class — she's running a mental narrative: "How would I teach this? What kind of issues would come up?" She makes the project herself first, thinking from the student's perspective. Because she's only been quilting for five years, those memories of being a beginner are still fresh. She remembers the YouTube videos that didn't show the right camera angle. She remembers the missing context that finally clicked after weeks of trial and error.
So when she teaches now, she's specific. This is what the seam should look like from this angle. This is why I position the camera here. This is the little thing I watch for that you might miss.
That closeness to the student experience became a superpower. And it compounded quickly.
The first plan was to launch a full course locally. But when she moved to La Ronge, circumstances shifted. The space didn't work out. The equipment access fell through. But instead of abandoning the idea, she scaled it. She reached out to her local community with a Facebook post: "Hey, I'm here officially." The library reached out. She started teaching a two-hour beginner series. Those classes were designed with kits so students could come in-person or work remotely.
Then came the mystery quilts.
She started filming tutorials for a mystery quilt project, and though that specific class didn't air, the filming experience taught her so much about video production that she decided to use it for a summit presentation. She created a video on "precision without pressure" — piecing techniques that actually work — and it opened doors to more collaborative projects and summit opportunities.
But here's where it gets smart from a business perspective: instead of chasing only those big summit launches, she decided to build her core offering around mystery quilts. She now has an evergreen mystery quilt series (built with Flowdesk automation, so students choose their own delivery pace — weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly). Each comes with a companion e-book and optional tutorial videos for people who want extra support.
She's not waiting until everything is perfect to launch. She's already running her first mystery quilt, she's building the second, and she's planning the third. And every piece is filmable. Every technique she teaches will eventually become part of an online course.
"I only had to do the workflow once. I just copied and pasted it," she said about her email automation. "All I had to go through then was just change the frequency for the emails to go out."
That's the difference between taking action without a system and taking action with one.
Hey Tori and Krista Takeaway
What Krista understood that a lot of action-takers miss: structure doesn't slow you down. It speeds you up.
She moved into a new province, launched a teaching business, created evergreen products, and built an in-home shop — all while using a free book club to give herself permission and a framework. She didn't have to wait until she felt "ready." She just needed bite-sized steps and deadlines.
And now, as she scales, she's ready for the next piece: marketing. "Between listening to a handful of podcasts, I've listened to like Jeff Walker's Launch as an ebook and I have the book," she told me. "But I think it's like, you can only learn so much about like marketing ahead of time before you're really ready to like dive in and actually like do all the stuff. And now I'm at like that stage."
She's got the products. She's got the systems. Now she's ready to get the word out.
The Workshops Unleashed Book Club — Free or Paid
The book club runs every July and January, and it's designed exactly how Krista experienced it — with options.
You can join for free. You'll get weekly emails with assignments and a Facebook group where you can share your work and get accountability from other creative entrepreneurs working through the same chapters. That's it. No payment, no Zoom calls, just structure and community.
Or you can join the paid Business Intensive. You'll get everything above plus live Zoom meetings (we do quarterly meetups, and in the summer they're smaller — usually four or five people, so you get real attention). You can submit your homework directly to me and get personalized feedback via email. And there's a grand prize drawing for members who complete the program.
Krista took the free option first because, as she put it, "it was low-risk." She could explore the material while managing a move and a business transition. And it worked. Now she's ready for the paid track.
If you've been thinking about teaching — whether online, in-person, or both — if you have a course idea that feels like "a big scary thing," or if you're ready to turn your quilting, crafting, or creative skill into an actual teachable offer, the book club is where to start.
About the Author
Tori McElwain is a digital marketing coach for quilting and creative businesses. With 24+ years of quilting experience and a Master's degree in Education, she helps quilters attract more students, sell more patterns, and grow their businesses online — without losing the joy of creating. She's the author of Workshops Unleashed and host of the Hey Tori! Podcast.
Comments