I have always loved animals. When I was little I wanted to be a vet, but then I discovered that you need to be pretty good at maths to get into vet school, so that squashed that dream. I did work in a vet surgery from the age of 16 to 19 around school as a nurse assistant and I loved it but it did show me that I didn’t want to be a vet nurse! Instead I completed a Zoology BSc and Environmental Biology MSc.
My first real job after uni was at a falconry display centre. I loved being a falconer! Training the birds and playing with the babies was awesome. The barn owls were the best, they have so much character! I then moved facilities and went into the big business side of breeding falcons. I was in charge of the brood room and assisted in the hatching and rearing of over 300 tiny falcon chicks each year. It was in that job that I discovered sewing, strangely enough. We would use casting jackets (squares of canvas with elastic and velcro) to hold the birds secure and to keep us safe from their feet when they needed to be caught up for transport or for medical attention. One winter I was tasked with making loads of these. I was sent to this tiny little store room that had an old treadle Singer machine that had been mechanised, two needles and a load of this thick fabric, binding, and elastic. I had absolutely no idea how any of it worked. Talk about a trial by fire!
I left there in 2012 to have my first baby boy as the hours were too long with a small child. On that maternity leave I realised I actually really missed that old Singer so bought myself a cheap Husqvarna sewing machine and I was off! The amount of tiny baby clothes piling up prompted me to try making a keepsake bear from them, which I then shared on Facebook and the requests came flooding in….Kim’s Keepsake Teddies was born! I made those bears for several years and stopped when my second son was born (I still have a bag of his baby clothes to make his bear. He’s 7.5 now.) as it was getting harder to find sewing time with two small children and Facebook started its downward slide for small businesses. I tried to make a business of making baby clothes but it didn’t stick. Around that time I started seeing intriguing hashtags on Instagram of ‘Quilting’ ‘EPP’ and ‘FPP’. To my mind quilts were the big thick things on your bed and were normally brown and floral. IG opened my eyes to modern quilting and down the rabbit hole I went!
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