Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alex Trekas. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alex, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s talk about social media – do you manage your own or do you have someone or a company that handles it for you? Why did you make the choice you did?

I manage my own social media. I strive to post regularly to keep a consistent flow to keep my page alive and active. It’s hard to step back and focus on the social media aspect, as it can take up so much of your time. After every quilt or project, I take several pictures to post, to not only show my work but as eye candy, because I’m sure just like me, many others enjoy looking at pretty and inspiring projects. I would love to do more photos of before and after, videos and reels, and get full pictures of the projects I do, but space is limited and so is my time. When posting the photos, I try to tag and mention as many other artists, creators, and fabric lines that I can to broaden my search radius. If I can, I try to ask an engaging question for my audience to get more responses and create a conversation. Responding to each and every comments is very important as well to keep engagement up and encourage comments.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I came into quilting by happenstance. I had just learned how to knit, and my local yarn shop was also a quilt store, and held “Gather and Stitch,” which was a time where anyone can come and do their craft, whether it was quilting, cross stitch, crochet, knitting, or what ever you made! The woman across from me was quilting and working on Moda’s Village, a pattern that made houses. I remember watching and thinking it looked like fun and interesting. The next day, I went and bought all the necessary tools and started my adventure in quilting. As my love for quilting grew, or rather the piecing part of it, I slowly started to become aware of quilting (I know, it gets confusing,) the decorative stitching that holds the top, middle, and bottom fabric together. The way the stitching can completely change how a quilt looks, make sharp edges look soft, add movement, and make things pop. I eventually became friends with a long arm quilter. A long arm is essentially a giant sewing machine. Instead of moving fabric through a machine, the machine moves through the fabric. Think 12 feet long, and 2 feet wide of sewing space. Some of these long arms are computerized and you can set the pattern and the machine moves for you creating the design. The friend that I mentioned before happened to work for a big shot in the long arm world. I’m talking Gammill Educator, Pattern Designer, a wall full of ribbons from shows she has won. She is the sweetest woman and loves to teach. And I got the chance to spend three days with her, learning how to machine works and what it really means to long arm, how to choose designs and how it can accent the simplest of things. Those three days sold me. I was hooked. That’s when I decided to get my own machine, and open my own long arm business, Captivating Threads. What is it that I do exactly? I am a finishing service. Once someone finishes piecing the top, they bring it to me and I sew it to the backing. There are so many designs, each one perfect for a quilt. Stars, fish, swirls, flowers, snowflakes, you name it. I help accent their already beautiful work. That’s the reason behind the name. The way the quilting can accent and make it look completely different is breathtaking, how it can make it move. Recently, I did a quilt called Nebula, and each diamond in this quilt had its own pattern that had to be set, adjusted, and sewn. In just the background Diamonds, there were 580 diamonds. I put in a quilt show, simply because I wanted to be a vendor there, and to show off my product. Little did I know, the quilt show was judged, and not by a group of strangers, but by a nationally certified quilt show judge. And I won “Best Machine Quilting.” At the date of the show, I had only been long arm quilting for 6 months. I was in awe. I didn’t even know the show was a judged show! And the woman who taught me, one of her quilts was there, next to mine, and won best of show. I had a quilt that won best machine quilting, next to my mentors, after I had only been long arming for 6 months. Even with this huge achievement, I still have so much to learn and grow and create. And it is the most exciting journey, and every day I’m thankful I took that leap.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Like any technology, it can break at any moment. I live in Wisconsin, and I purchased my machine used from Texas. My fiancee and I flew to Texas, rented a Uhaul, packed up the machine, and drove it back to Wisconsin. Two weeks later, after a canceled service call to set up the machine, I decided to set up the machine myself and succeeded! Great money saver. I started to work on my first quilt, and after I finished, I went around back to make sure there weren’t any skipped stitches, nests of thread, or anything that needed fixing. As I was checking, my knee nudged the controller, the computerized motor tower (looks like a computer.) That nudge turned off my machine. It stopped connecting. It wouldn’t turn on, it wouldn’t move. Nothing. A service call was 3 weeks away, so I tried using connections to see if any friends or family with a history in computers and engineering could help to no avail. When the technician finally came, it turns out that little nudge, and im talking barely would rock a table, dislodged a wire inside of the controller, and when it did, sent an arc through the entire system and fried it. It was chasing a rabbit. Once one thing was working, we found another part was not, over and over again. We replaced several motors, encoders, wires, sensors, and the computer. I essentially have a new machine from how much they replaced. Instead of saving money by buying a used machine, I had a to drop a whole lot of money on fixing it, before I could even do any samples, tests, or any marketing.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think the biggest thing people struggle to understand about my work is what exactly I do. I am a service. I am not a seller. I do not make quilts and sell them to people. I finish them for others so they can enjoy them. Another struggle is the fact I have a computerized system. To some people, even creatives, they see that as cheating. I can still use the machine freely to sew the designs by hand, but with my machine I can set up the program, and it will do it for me. But it is still a lot of work. Editing patterns, ensuring accuracy. These are still very real things I have to do. I still have to set up my machine, and ensure things are straight, smooth, tension for my thread. It still takes me hours to do intricate designs, because I am have to be precise, but this machine allows me to do that. It is still work, and a huge creative process.

Contact Info:

• Website: captivatingthreads.com
• Instagram: @captivating.threads
• Facebook: @captivating.threads
• Other: [email protected]