Jackie’s Machine Quilting Background

Fifteen years ago, Jackie attended her first quilt show and was amazed at the beautiful quilts on display. She took a risk and purchased a long arm machine and went into business with very little knowledge on what she was about to do. Isn’t that like so many of us business owners? We all have to start somewhere, and we will never know unless we try! I’m happy to say that after sewing a few quilts for herself, she showed them at a local quilt guild and soon started to acquire customers.

After about five years of teaching herself quilting, her customers started entering their quilts in shows and they won ribbons for her quilting! A huge accomplishment occurred in 2019 when she was awarded the Master Piece Quilt Award by the National Association of Certified Quilt Judges for exceptional craftsmanship in excellence and design. This is one of the biggest awards a quilter can get!

Learning to sew from her grandmother, who began sewing when she was just eight, Jackie is carrying on the tradition. Want to know an amazing fact? Jackie’s grandmother actually designed and sewed gowns for celebrities in Hollywood! Going along, for fittings, she got to watch her grandmother in action! Jackie said her grandmother even received a kiss on the cheek from Elvis Presley! 🙂

Jackie’s Mission

Jackie’s mission resonates with the women she serves: “to instill confidence in quilting through education and guided practice. To give every quilter from beginner to advance the tools to create beautiful quilts despite any personal artistic limitations.”

I love that because it makes me feel like even I could do this!

She’s been accomplishing this through classes at Quilt Mercantile in Celeste, TX and is working on her first digital 12 week course so she can reach even more quilters! She specializes in long arm quilting and teaches beginning to advanced. (I confess I didn’t even know what that meant before the photo shoot.) She adds decorative top stitching to make a pieced top into a quilt. Future plans include digitizing and selling quilt designs on her site and public speaking.

Jackie’s Quilting Photo Shoot

When I arrived at Jackie’s son-in-law’s chiropractic office (Jackie’s quilting shoot location), she had both of her daughters there to help out! We started off with Jackie at a sewing machine, where she probably felt very comfortable. The room had a lot of natural light, so we opened all the blinds to let it stream in. I still set up off camera flash units just because I love the clean white light. We captured detail images of thread and the sewing machine and then posed and action photos of Jackie.

From there, we moved on to displaying Jackie’s quilts and her numerous awards! We also used a back office for office type images before moving outdoors. Downtown Rowlett has lots of cute nooks and crannies (as do many downtowns). We captured a variety of images in about two hours and she will have a library of professional pictures to up level her brand for her digital course and more! I’d say Jackie’s quilting shoot was a success!

4 Take Aways for Your Next Photo Shoot

1. If you can have a friend or family member join you on your photo session, it helps tremendously! They can hang up clothes between outfit changes, fix stray hairs, get the next props ready, etc. Invaluable!
2. If taking photos of yourself inside, open all the windows (and doors if possible!) and turn off all indoor lighting including lamps. Pose facing the natural light and you won’t have competing light to muddy the colors.
3. Starting off your session doing something you normally do and love helps ease the jitters that are natural at the beginning of every session! In Jackie’s case, all she had to do was sew! No pressure!
4. Find fun spots in a local downtown area for outdoor images. Walking images are also great ones to do first because, again, it eases your nerves! Look off to the side or slightly beyond the camera so the camera isn’t intimidating!

 

  

  

Wondering what exactly to do with your branding images after you have a session? Check out this blog post about 4 Creative Ways to Use your Branding Images!