Friday and Saturday, I (and about 40 other quilting buddies!) will be traveling across Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin stopping and shopping at 8 great quilt stores featured in The Better Homes & Gardens Quilt Sampler magazine!  I will report back on my shopping successes and fun times!  Thanks to everyone at the Woolen Needle, Williamsburg, IA,  for organizing the bus trip!

Several people have asked me how I named my longarm business, so here’s the story. Some have assumed that the L is for my name, Linda and the R is for my youngest daughter, Rachel.  That is just a coincidence.  The L & R is for my parents, Larry and Ruth.  Today is my mother’s birthday, she would have been 83 years old.  She died in 1994 at 65 years young, my dad died in 2000, he was 77.  Our family farm was incorporated and the corporate name was L & R Rieken, Co., which we called L & R.   When I got my longarm in 2004, I used my inheritance to buy it.  My mother loved making quilts.  She made great quilts from our clothes using cardboard templates and tied them with crochet thread.

This flower fabric is in several quilts, it was one of my prom dresses!  It had yards and yards of polyester fabric.

When my son was born in 1984 she stayed with me for a month and we made a quilt from my maternity clothes.   Later on, he swiped that quilt and took it to Florida!  Mother made quilts for everyone in the family and spent many hours making quilts at her church for Lutheran World Relief (LWR).  Their quilting group donated multitudes of quilts every year, here’s a picture with the church pews covered in quilts ready to ship to LWR.

My mother would love what’s going on in the quilting world now.  I think of my her everyday when I’m stitching away on quilts.  She would be very happy that I’m sewing and doing something creative.  When it came time to name my longarm business, L & R was obvious and Designs was added as an open ended statement, allowing the business to evolve without changing it’s name.  Thanks for listening, now you know.