We recently connected with Jen Frost and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jen, thanks for joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
If you had asked me a decade ago if I would be leading my own business as a professional quilt pattern designer, I would have laughed – I didn’t even know where my sewing machine was! My journey into the fiber arts is one of three subtle but monumental shifts of my very core being.
Ten years ago, I was living my dream, working as an Systems Implementation Lead at a local biotech firm. I loved what I did, the people I worked with, and the countries I had the amazing opportunity to visit as part of my career. My husband and I were in our early thirties, and while the pace of work was fast and demanding, life was good. It was around this time that my grandmother turned 90, which – with aunts, uncles, and cousins spread out across five different states – provided the perfect opportunity for a family reunion.
We arrived at my grandparents’ home in northeast Pennsylvania, and the beautiful memories of childhood flooded back. The times spent playing with cousins outside, the boisterous gatherings at Christmas and Easter, the smells of traditional Polish foods that permeated from the kitchen throughout their small home. As I sat outside, sipping a glass of cool lemonade that hot summer day, my cousin and his wife pulled up along with their sixteen day old baby. He wiggled, he snuggled, he cried, and he laughed as she placed him into my arms! Holding this sweet, soft little boy created a shift in my very being. Less than four months later, we, too, were pregnant.
My company was very supportive throughout the pregnancy which, honestly, was a dream. I traveled routinely for work, and have the funniest photos of my bump in various countries throughout the world as I continued in my career! My husband and I had come to an agreement; he would be the “primary parent”. You know, the one who is there for pick-up and drop-off, takes care of the doctor appointments, serves as the emergency contact. After all, I had a CAREER and couldn’t just walk away from it. I made copious plans with my team in planning for my time away during maternity leave, as well as for the next stages of the project for when I returned which included an extended assignment in Singapore. While I looked forward to meeting and snuggling this tiny little human that I had been entrusted with, I looked with equal anticipation at living abroad and experiencing all this next phase of the project would hold.
I went into labor two days early, and all went as planned. I snuggled our beautiful son in the hospital bed as I responded to work emails, feeling like I was doing it all – already rocking this work/life balance. Over the next few weeks at home, we all adjusted to what became our new normal….and as the countdown to returning to work came closer and closer, I felt my heart painfully begin to break. When the day came to finally return, I left my son on the floor at a daycare (the woman working in the infants room had three screaming children already in her arms) and tearfully went to work. As I sat in my VP’s office that morning, planning for Phase II and all that Singapore would entail, my mind kept going back to that tiny little baby, who just wanted his mom. The axis of my being shifted a second time.
My husband and I talked, ran numbers, and scenario played every possible path. Could we make it work if I stayed home? Could we swing it financially? What would our new life look like? For me, the eleven months spent figuring it out were the hardest eleven months I’ve ever lived. Each day my heart cracked as I dropped our baby off at daycare. Each afternoon it broke even more; as he began to adjust to seeing his daycare provider more than me, he would cling to her (and not to me) when it was time to leave. I just couldn’t do this. This was not the life I wanted to lead, not the way I wanted my family to be. I had lost all joy, and one Friday in December, I left work and took on a new job title: Mom.
While the joy I experienced in this new full-time role was truly unlike anything I’ve felt, I slowly developed a desire to have something that gave me identity outside of the day to day. I loved the routine each week brought at home with my son, truly, but desired a channel to focus my energy during the early morning, nap, and evening hours. One day, I pulled out my sewing machine and sewed a small blue shark tote bag for my son, who had just turned three and wanted to carry all his favorite little toys with him wherever he went. The sense of pride I had in designing a bag that far exceeded my initial expectation was exhilarating, and I knew I wanted more. With the season of Advent approaching, I taught myself basic quilting and designed a simple Advent Wreaths table runner, depicting the each of the four weeks of Advent. As friends and family came to visit, they loved the runner and wanted one for themselves. Knowing the time that went into creating it, I knew I couldn’t make them one – but realized I could teach them how to make one for themselves. This realization brought about the third pivotal shift.
It’s been seven years since that last shift, and my world truly sits in balance. I feel as if I’m doing what I was created to do. Through my small business, Faith and Fabric, I am able to share the beauty of the Christian faith by designing inspirational quilt patterns. I am enabling others to sew and create something beautiful and faith-filled for their home. The feeling I get when I receive a customer email with photos of the quilt they made using my pattern never gets old and makes my heart sing! I’ve been able to, most days, achieve that desired work/life balance that we all strive to strive for. Life is a balancing act, and each season brings new facets that need to be worked into that balance. As the business continues to grow, I find joy in seeing my patterns carried in shops throughout the US, joy in seeing my quilts hung in mission churches in Africa, joy in seeing students’ faces as I teach them a new quilting technique. Most of all? I find joy in the small family who takes every step of this journey with me.
Jen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
The art of quilting is seeing a resurgence as we – as a global community – experience a movement and desire towards handmade products and a slower pace of life. A Quilting in America 2000 survey indicates the quilting market is worth $4.2 billion annually; year over year, this number has continued to grow. There are approximately 10 million quilters in the United States, a number that’s held stable over the past decade.
My business sets itself apart from other quilt pattern designers as the majority of my patterns are focused on celebrating the Christian faith. There really aren’t any other designers doing this, which gives me a wonderful niche to play and grow in. Plus, with over 2000 years of Christian tradition, the potential for creating new ideas is limitless! Seriously, though, I truly appreciate being able to bring an element of faith into the home. Each of us are part of our own little domestic church within our family, and my patterns offer a way for individuals to create something that serves as an inspirational image of faith. Quilts themselves are heirloom items, and knowing that I’m just one small step in what could become a treasured family item is such a joy.
My current offering of patterns focuses around major Christian holidays, like Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter and Pentecost. Within this range of patterns, I create designs that appeal to a variety of quilters: roughly half my designs are traditional piecing (measuring, cutting, and sewing fabric together) and half are foundation paper pieced (sewing fabric directly onto paper designs). Foundation paper piecing is probably my favorite of the two; it lets you create the most unique shapes and designs, like I did in our Jesse Tree quilt which is comprised of 24 blocks, each sharing an image from our salvation story.
Within my business, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to work with so many different denominations; while my family is Catholic, I’ve developed lovely relationships that span the Christian community. I’ve had the opportunity to work with female pastors looking to create unique clergy stoles from my fabric line, Pentecostal parishes wanting quilted banners for their church, and local girl scout-type groups wanting basic sewing instruction. Connecting with others outside my immediate community has been such a gift.
I also truly enjoy the opportunity to travel. I’ve had the opportunity to present my work at several quilt shows, and have started speaking at local quilt guilds about what I do; it’s also an opportunity to share my work and broaden my circle, which I love. The time after the speaking engagements – when individuals come up for a closer look at the quilts, sharing their thoughts, stories, and memories – is my favorite part of the day!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
One lesson I had to unlearn was that I needed to do what others are doing. When I started out, I focused so much on trends: trends in the quilting industry, trends in the home industry, trends in the faith industry. What I learned is that I spent so much time trying to fit into these trends that I lost sight of what I did and the uniqueness that I offered. As Faith and Fabric is a business, my earnings suffered. I took time to reset, and reexplored the concepts that inspired me from the beginning. Why was I doing what I did? What was it that set me apart? What made my business unique? What could I offer that other businesses weren’t offering? When I refocused my priorities, my business began to thrive.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
Social media is such a broad word! For me, social media is about connecting with your audience. To connect with your audience, you need to know where your audience is. Otherwise, you’ll spend countless hours creating beautiful content and sharing it to an empty room. Two years ago, I wanted to broaden my outreach so I created both a YouTube and Twitter account. Each year, my YouTube channel has grown by about 1,000 followers and my Twitter account by about…15. You couldn’t have two more extremes! By learning where my audience is, and where I can have the biggest reach, I’m able to get my message heard. We live in a noisy world where everyone is clamoring for our attention, so knowing where your audience is and how to reach them is key. Once you find out where they are, focus your energy on that social media channel. We can’t be everything to everyone, which means we don’t have the bandwidth to rock every social media platform out there. What we can do is intelligently focus our attention on those platforms that bring us closer to our target audience – and ultimately gets our message heard.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://faithandfabricdesign.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/faithandfabric
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FaithAndFabric/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqxODYaYaJHlPuV19DP_P1Q
Image Credits
All photos copyright Faith and Fabric