Before Kimberbell Day, before feature quilts and What's New Wednesday, before bench pillows and events and Digital Dealer Exclusives and all the Kimberbell projects you know and love today . . .
There was a 4th grade teacher named Kim Christopherson who decided to pause her teaching career so she could stay home with her kids. Though she loved being home, she also craved a small creative outlet!
And that's how the Kimberbell story began.
Personalized Name Pillows
While Kim enjoyed being home with her children, she also looked for ways to be creative. So she found a group of moms on eBay who enjoyed making and selling one-of-a-kind items for children.
Hmmm. Could she do that, too? 🤔 And, if so, what type of project could she offer?
Well, Kim loved to doodle and draw and she also loved working with fabrics, applique, and fusible web. So she started stitching personalized name pillows for children. (They were a hit!)
Soon, people from all over the country were ordering pillows with their children's names and specific bedroom colors. Kim loved creating special pillows like these:
This creative outlet was a lot of fun (and a great excuse to buy more fabric)! 😊 But as more and more orders poured in, it soon became hard to keep up.
Kim was waking up early, staying up late, and taking care of her family in the meantime.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Trying to do it all was getting stressful, especially as she worked around her toddler's schedule. One day, Kim's husband, Ryan, came home to an overwhelmed wife. He took one look at her face and said,
"I love what you're doing, it's great. But have you ever thought of using your teaching background to teach DIYers to make theirown name pillows?"
It was a good idea, but would anyone go for it? Making name pillows came so easily to Kim, she thought there was no way anyone would buy instructions for something that simple to do.
But she may as well try. So Kim created step-by-step instructions of the whole pillow-making process from start to finish (including pictures). She put a PDF up on eBay and thought, "No one will buy this."
They did. So many people did, over and over again. This blew Kim away.
A New Name
Now with more balance in her life, Kim started designing more projects and selling them online every now and again. With more projects to sell, she had a real business (albeit a small one). And businesses need names.
What to call her fledgling company?
Kim thought and thought of various names, mostly to do with applique and sewing, but nothing seemed right. Finally, she thought about the nickname her parents had given her as a child: "Kimberbell."
It was nostalgic, had a nice ring to it, and just seemed right. Kimberbell it was!
Sisterly Support
After a few years of designing small projects to sell online, life took an interesting turn in 2011 when Kim's twin sister, Kris, decided to open her own quilt shop in town. This was a MAJOR undertaking, to say the least.
The day before the grand opening, Kim stopped in to see how things were going. Everything was beautiful and ready to go except for a blank wall. One completely blank wall, and no time to find anything to fill it.
After looking at that wall for a minute, Kim had an idea. A brilliant, scary, completely unique idea: she suggested to Kris that she put up a sign that said, "Sign up for our mystery quilt block of the week!"
So . . .what was that? She didn't know yet. For now, the sisters decided it would be a Halloween quilt made one block and one week at a time. Kim would design the quilt as they went along.
As Kris didn't know her customers yet (or their color preferences), she went around her new shop and chose bolts of fabric in two color ways: fun & flirty and dark & dirty. Customers had to decide which they were!
The mystery quilt block of the week was a HUGE hit. Well over 200 people signed up, sight unseen, just to be part of the fun. Block by block and stitch by stitch, the 40 x 40" Home is Where the Haunt Is quilt came to life, building confidence, friendship, and a sense of camaraderie among everyone who participated.
Joy Ercanbrack was part of the experience, right from the start:
I was in the store on opening day and when I saw the display about the mystery quilt, I really wanted to do it. There were swatches of fabric and a sign saying, 'Are you dark and dirty OR fun and flirty?' I wandered around the quilt shop wondering which I was! It was fun to try and identify with something like that, and we hadn't any idea what the quilt would be. Everything about the mystery was so exciting and so uniting, with everyone looking forward to the next week's block."
More, Please
Week after week, Home is Where the Haunt Is came together. It was an exciting (and very busy) time! And after it was all over, Kim thought she was done. (Phew! 😅)
Hmmmmm.
Kris's customers didn't want to be done. They now had a wall dedicated to their newly-finished Halloween quilt and they needed other 40 x 40" holiday quilts to fill that space all year long.
So Kim went back to the drawing board for other holidays, with patterns for Christmas and Valentine's Day and all the rest. (Many of these patterns are still available on Kimberbell.com!) And here's another fun fact: some of these quilts have now been turned into 22 x 22" pillows to make on your embroidery machine.
Please see Merry Christmas, Y'all, In All Things Give Thanks, Lucky Us, Sweet Land of Liberty, Life is Better in Full Bloom, Let Me Call You Tweetheart, and the one that started it all: Home is Where the Haunt Is.)
But I digress. Back to the narrative.
It wasn't too long before other shops heard about the mystery quilts and blocks of the week and all the fun. They wanted in! Kim and Ryan went to Quilt Market in 2012 with a small booth made of PVC pipe and started building relationships. Shops wanted to sell Kimberbell products, and the new company was gaining traction.
Bench Pillows
One day, as Kim was in the process of making a 40 x 40" winter quilt, she thought the bottom row would be darling as a pillow. This row featured two snowmen and one penguin. (Wouldn't that be cute on a bench?)
So she took that row and put it on the black bench in her entryway. She LOVED how it looked! As there wasn't a pillow form the size of that row (16 x 38"), she made her own.
And the Kimberbell Bench Pillow was born!
Bench pillows were very well received. As smaller projects, they weren't as overwhelming as a quilt can be and people loved making them! Even if they didn't have a bench, they were perfect on couches or beds.
Kimberbell fans still love bench pillows.
Oh, and by the way . . .we now offers a 16 x 38" Pillow Insert. 😉
Well, friends, here's where we'll end Part One of this story. (I have to pause somewhere and leave you hanging just a little, right?)
If you'd like to listen to this story in Kim's own voice (and with more detail), please click HERE. And be sure to check back in a couple of weeks to hear the continuing saga of how Kimberbell came to be.
Until next time!
