About

I am Liz Wood and making quilts is what I love to do.  I learned to sew on a sewing machine in the late 80’s while in Home Economics class in high school.  I learned to make pillowcases, pajama’s, shorts and pincushions. Several years later, after I was married and had small children, I was intrigued by quilts made by the ladies in my community. I began to attend their bi-monthly gatherings at a small, local church where these ladies took me under their wing and began to teach me the tricks of the trade.  We would sew all day and take a short break for a small potluck lunch in which we all brought a homemade dish to contribute for the meal. These ladies not only made beautiful quilts but were the best cooks in the county.  I have been on this quilting journey for over 20 years now and what a exciting adventure it has been. I am married to my husband, Michael for 8 years and we have 3 adult children & a small 8 year old yorkie dog, Teek, aka QUILTSHOP greeter.
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Quilting brings me joy while also allowing my creativity to shine through my designs and creations.  Quilting has always been a way for me to not overthink the daily ebbs and flows of life’s situations and keeps my mind & hands busy making something beautiful.  Quilting is my therapy in so many ways.  I think it makes me feel fulfilled and accomplished. So I keep designing and creating more quilts. I can find projects to create faster than I can even get them sewn and quilted. I believe that every quilt tells a story and I simply get to “tell the story” with each unique quilt that I create.

I’ve always enjoyed collecting beautiful, vividly-colored fabrics and combining them with shapes and textures to create items that my customers will absolutely love. I am blessed to have a business that revolves around my passion & love of quilting.  I love creating unique one-of-a-kind quilt treasures of a lifetime for others and feeling their excitement as they receive them. Often, my creations touch people so deeply that it gives me great satisfaction for all my laborious hours of sewing & creativity.  I also quilt to inspire others, so that they too can learn to create their own works of art. Quilters are some of the most sincere and genuine people whom are a blessing to me because they are my daily source of motivation and inspiration.

How The Business Started!

I started my business, The Quilted Cowgirl, ETC as a part-time adventure. I would often stay up late at night creating and making quilts for someone special by commission, but also balancing a full-time day job in banking. My husband found a used longarm for sale on Craigslist and I pursued learning how to quilt my own quilt tops and purchased that used longarm. After several months of practicing, I decided that I would quit my full-time job and start a small in-home business quilting for others. I can remember and praying for just enough quilt tops to come in to help me pay for my longarm. Fast forward a year a half later, I decided to start buying some fabric at wholesale to help with the profit side of doing this business for the public. I never really envisioned myself being a fabric store but starting my second year of my in-home business, I was becoming a growing fabric retailer. I also began selling fabric in an online platform, Etsy. I can vividly remember hoping sell and package 10 a week. People began spread the good news of my small in-home business with their friends and more friends. My business became the best kept lil secret amongst local quilters. My business grew by leaps and bounds, from longarming quilts for others, selling fabrics, to teaching a class or two here and there and an occasional quilt retreat in my house for 3 days. One day, the vision for a quilt shop started to be tossed around like fabric scraps under a rotary cutter. I now had a 4 bedroom house over-consumed with my small business.

Where I Want The Quilted Cowgirl to Go!

In January 2020, we started laying the groundwork that I now had enough foot traffic through our house every day to validate building a shop/personal workspace. I now had 650 bolts of fabric wall-to-wall in one bedroom and a workroom in another room and my longarm in another room and it was gravity out into other areas of our house by the second. We set to work making the shop a reality for 2020, little did we know a pandemic year was about to emerge. In April, we had a ground-breaking, seed-planting prayer ceremony on the freshly bladed grounded next to our house. We knew we had to take God as our business partner and do this shop thing according to His plans. Covid-19 came in with a vengeance and started shutting things down to a halt. The most timely opportunities started presenting themselves. We were able to borrow our own money and pay our house off and have money for the shop too. Somehow we managed to get a crew in place and build the building and my husband took a furlough with his job to see this project through to the completion. August 1, 2020 I moved my in-home fabric quilting business in to my newly constructed shop. We celebrated our grand NEW SHOP opening in October with an OPEN HOUSE and had a record day on our books. The pandemic crisis really changed how we had to do business but for me and my journey, God carried us through the pandemic year with the best year of business so far. I have learned to not put a period where God wasn’t finished with the story yet. So as for the future plans of The Quilted Cowgirl, ETC….. my quilt story is still in the creation….The Best is Yet to Come!