Seven years and 10,000 quilts later.. What does that even look like??
Hi, I am Hannah, the owner of Stitched and Found. This week, I am listing my 10,000th quilt.
So… that is a lot of quilts. I look around at my life and honestly I don’t know how I got here. I never sat out to run an online commerce store or have a large social media following. I was just a wedding photographer that some how just sold 10,000 quilts.
If you want to know how, here is a brief history of me and this weird niche of the internet I am a part of.
I was born and raised in a small town in middle TN. I grew up on a dairy farm with quilts hanging on the walls in our home. I would sit at my grandmother’s feet eating Oreos, watching Bonanza, while she hand quilted in her recliner behind me. Quilts were every where, and I honestly, never even noticed them. My grandmother gifted me one when I got married, but it still wasn’t this super important thing to me.
Fast forward many years, and in May of 2015 I started selling vintage items online with a friend (raise your hand if you followed me back from my The Handpicked Home days!!). We quickly learned that quilts had a better margin versus a little vintage basket and also, quilts were selling really well! Also, just to note, this was also back with vintage Instragram. We could only post one photo at a time, not ten. And Stories wasn’t a thing yet! We did that together for about a year (that was in 2016). I decided to start Stitched and Found on my own, and that’s when I launched my website.
Another interesting fact: I have never updated my website and the home page has the same photo I used to launch six years ago. Haha.
When I first started, I would say 90% of my sales were to other photographers. I was selling prop quilts to them so that they could use the quilts in their photo sessions. They didn’t care if they were worn or had stains. But over the years, that number has gone down and most people buy them for their homes or projects.
But, with that to say, I owe my success to being a photographer and being able to market to that specific market. I also was already confident at taking photos, so that helped me stand apart online (especially back then).
Before my oldest was born in 2018, I would hunt down quilts all week. I would attend estate sales every Friday and jump in and out of antique stores. We would take buying trips all over, but mainly up into Kentucky. Now, I haven’t been to an estate sale since the month he was born. But, I continued hitting the Nashville Flea market every month and that is where I found most of my quilts. I had built a reputation and vendors knew to bring quilts because I would buy them. Our flea market didn’t randomly have more quilts than others across the south. It had them because they knew I was coming. There were many months were we rented a uhaul to bring all of my buys home.
A few years into buying entire car loads of quilts, several of my vendors decided we should meet outside of the flea market. It didn’t make sense for them to bring 50 to 100 quilts, haul them, set them up, and then me go through them, load them into my car, etc. We began meeting on different weekdays close to where they lived or their homes.
Fast forward another year and I am pregnant with my second son. Oh, and March 2020 happened. The flea market closed down for over a year, and I was left with no place to buy quilts. I am so thankful I had built these relationships with my vendors because I would have had to quit. But we continued to meet every month through the pandemic, and I owe my success to three or four of the sweetest women (who love me and my family so well). I still don’t know how they manage to continue to find so many for me each and every week!
So, here we are today. Seven years, 10,000 quilts (and probably well over 20,000 that I have actually held in my hands if you count the countless ones I don’t buy), over 150,000 photos taken, packages to all 50 states and 16 other countries, added three baby boys, moved into three different houses, and so much life.
I owe all of this that I have built to each one of you. You are the ones buying my quilts and encouraging me in the comments and DMs.
I still don’t know how this is my day-to-day life, but I am more thankful than you could ever know. Being able to stay home with my kids is all I could ever want. It is because of this job that we have been able to do the things we have needed to and wanted to over the years as my husband was able to focus solely on building his business.
I doubt I will make it through 10,000 more (hey, mothering and raising my children tops all other responsibilities). But, if you ever have quilt questions, ask! I have kind of held a lot of them.
Oh, and meet lucky number 10,000.
