We recently connected with HollyAnne Knight and have shared our conversation below.

Hi HollyAnne, thanks for joining us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

String & Story was actually a rebrand of a small Etsy shop I started as a newlywed. As we looked ahead at what the company could become, there was a lot I didn’t know yet. However, it was clear that I would be doing fiber arts, & I was passionate about creating a sense of community in my customers where we could share our stories and truly get to know each other. Hence, String & Story. The company has evolved a lot since that first rebrand, but I’m really pleased that the name has aged well.

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?

String & Story began as quilting services company (specifically tshirt quilts), evolved to a quilting education company, and is now a hybrid of in person and online retail & classes. While I had taken some sewing classes as a kiddo, I returned to sewing in my early twenties after the birth of my first son. Making that firs tshirt quilt for my mom really unlocked something in me– I was able to channel my creativity into making something both practical and sentimental. The joy it brought her brought me a lot of joy too, and I realized there were probably lots of other folks who had drawers full of special shirts that they’d like to save but didn’t want to wear any more. For several years, String & Story’s almost exclusive focus as a business was making tshirt quilts for families across the country.

At the same time, I had discovered the world of modern quilting and, more specifically, the art of free motion quilting. I fell in love with this ability to doodle with thread to add another layer of dimension and interested to quilts. Along the way, I discovered another problem– wonderfully skilled quilters were afraid of free motion quilting their own projects! My formal education was to be teacher, and I’m as passionate about teaching as I am about quilting. Even though most of my industry thought it was a pretty crazy idea, I began to teach free motion quilting online– and it worked! The first time I taught Intro to Free Motion Quilting, I offered it for free– and was shocked to have over 400 sign ups! Quilters wanted to learn, and I was eager to teach them. In the first nine cohorts of my signature course, Free Motion Quilting Academy, we’ve welcomed over 2200 students to master this amazing skill.

Today, String & Story is in another season of transition. Our online-only model was hugely successful during COVID, and we were honored to serve our collective tens of thousands of students worldwide with blogs, online classes & events, & online retail during difficult and lonely pandemic times. We value a sense of community, and the Quilting Rockstars became even closer during the pandemic. This spring, we opened String & Story on Main– a brick & mortar classroom and shop in downtown Duluth, GA. We continue to serve our online Rockstars, and are excited to expand to spending time in person with our students as well. We offer beginner- intermediate quilting, bag-making, and garment sewing classes as well as supplies for a variety of projects.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

As I mentioned, we opened our first brick & mortar space at the end of April 2022. We have been online-only with relatively low overhead until this point, so opening a space has represented a significant amount of investment and risk for String & Story. Five weeks before we opened our doors, my Executive Assistant of nearly a year, and only full time employee, suddenly resigned. As String & Story was changing, she realized it was no longer the right fit for her. While I deeply respect anyone choosing a career pivot to pursue their own passions, it was an unnerving time to lose so much help. Rather than becoming a season of stress or worry, however, I was amazed to see how the investments I’d been making in my local relationships and in connecting with folks in my industry paid off. I had friends and colleagues come in from around Duluth and around the country to make sure the store was ready and wonderful for our grand opening. Even more, within just a week of my former employee’s departure, I re-connected with the most amazing sewist and hired her practically on the spot. She has been the perfect fit for String & Story in this new season, and now I can’t imagine opening String & Story on Main without her.

Looking back, I can see signs that my first employee’s tenure was coming to a close, but I was a new boss and didn’t know the questions and conversations to pursue. It is hard to transition from being a solo-preneur to running a team. It’s a different skill set than building a creative business or connecting with my customers. It hasn’t been a smooth journey, but with each hire and each conversation, I feel more confident about how I am leading my team, especially after navigating a new hire and opening our shop at the same time.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

The “bread and butter” of String & Story is free motion quilting education, specifically our signature online course, Free Motion Quilting Academy. I founded this course in Spring 2018, when digital courses were still relatively new and mostly confined to business & marketing education. A few large companies had begun producing online quilting education, but support and success were limited. As I began exploring the idea of teaching free motion quilting online, I was met with pretty harsh criticism. Folks just didn’t seem to think people could really learn to FMQ virtually. The industry model was to travel, sometimes 30-40 weeks a year, to teach in person at guilds and shops. I, however, had two babies at home and could not travel at all. In spite of the doubt, I decided to try my idea anyway. There were just five students in our first virtual cohort of the Academy, but they experienced wonderful results as a result of my hybrid teaching style– combining pre-recorded lessons with live Q&A sessions and demos. Since, our cohorts have become hundreds of students strong, totaling over two thousand, and I’ve become respected in my industry as an educator and innovator.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.stringandstory.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stringandstory/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stringandstory
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haknight/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/stringandstory

Image Credits
Klara Cu