Listen to a teaser for this episode! Listen to the full interview down below.
On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we’re talking about building a quilting software business with my guest, Dean Neumann and Penny McMorris, co-founders of Electric Quilt.
Dean and Penny are both from Wisconsin originally. After the Air Force and then graduate school, Dean was a Professor of Mathematics at Bowling Green State University for 25 years. He received a hand-me-down computer from his son in the late 1980s, and quickly became a self-taught computer programmer just for fun.
His wife, Penny McMorris, was the corporate art curator for Owens-Corning Corporation, headquartered in Toledo, Ohio. Penny was a self-taught quilt maker. She taught a few local classes and then talked her local PBS station (WBGU-TV) into letting her produce and host a television series showing quilt history and the best contemporary quilts of that time.
With Penny’s travels for her job and the TV show, Dean became interested in quilts and was motivated to find an enterprise that they could do together. He was the brainstorm behind the idea of creating a software that would allow quilters to pre-plan their designs. The result was the first Electric Quilt (EQ) program in 1992.
In this 1991 clip from Penny’s PBS show Great American Quilt Penny demonstrates the very first version of Electric Quilt (with Dean under the table controlling the keyboard).
They both eventually left their jobs to run the company full time. 26 years later, they continue to own and operate The Electric Quilt Company in Bowling Green, Ohio. These days, Penny is spending much more time away from the office enjoying various activities while Dean continues to be in the office several days a week.
In our conversation Penny and Dean talk about how they came to found Electric Quilt and they trace the company’s growth. We talk about how they survived shifts in operating systems and thrived in a competitive market. We mention:
- Jonathan Holstein’s The Pieced Quilt (affiliate link)
- Beth Gutchen’s The Perfect Patchwork Primer (affiliate link)
- Nancy Crow, Michael James, Terrie Mangat
EQ7 in action on Amy Gibson’s blog, Stitchery Dickory Dock.
And, of course, I ask Penny and Dean to recommend great stuff they’re enjoying right now.
Penny recommends:
- Fujilove
- the new Christopher Kimball magazine, Milk Street
Dean recommends:
- learning about particle physics
- the Chinese dictionary app, Pleco
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You can listen to this special episode by clicking on the green arrow below, or subscribe to the Craft Industry Alliance podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher so you never miss an episode. If you enjoy the show, tell a friend about it! Thank you so much.
Abby, I’ve never bothered to listen to a podcast before, but EQ7 is my favorite quilting tool and I could not bear to miss the chance to learn more about how the software came about. The podcast was great — smooth, very professionally done and easy to listen to, like an NPR story. Thanks so much for doing it!
Hi Rebecca, Wow! That means so much to me. Thank you for listening to the show and I hope you enjoy many more podcasts of all sorts in the weeks and months to come.
I have no knowledge of Electric Quilt. I do not know of anyone in our quilt guild who uses it. As program person for Common Threads Quilt Guild of Parma, Ohio, I was wondering if either or both of you would be interested in giving an introductory presentation to our guild. We meet on the 3rd Monday of the month at the Donna Smallwood Center in Parma, Ohio right behind the city hall. We could give you a stipend for coming plus mileage (120 from B G S U. (My husband and I are both Alumni) . I was thinking of Nov. 18, 2019 at 6:30 or Jan, Feb, March, or April of 2020.
Thankyou.
Elaine Wise
Hi Elaine, I would recommend reaching out to Electric Quilt via their website. They have ambassadors who teach people to use the software. They may be able to connect you with someone in your local area who could visit your guild.