Interview with Jennifer of Northern Lights Embroidery

How did you get started in the Business?
About 15 years ago, I used to own a small business where we custom designed and sewed team and group windsuits and jackets. We even sewed winter parkas. The customer would bring us their design idea and we made it happen. Our embroidery was always sent out and it was a 1 1/2 hour trip one way. We soon decided that we should be doing our own embroidery. I already had a Babylock home machine so it was a matter of learning to digitize and put it on the garments. As I learned to digitize, I soon tired of the sewing of garments. The embroidery was a lot more fun! Eventually we dropped the custom designing and sewing end of the business and concentrated on the embroidery part. Usually our orders consisted of anywhere from 50 to 100 garments. I loved the Artista software as soon as I tried it. Someone got a group of ladies together to digitize and the idea of the group was to only digitize a couple of designs and then call it quits. We started with about 20 members and we now have over 1000. When it was time to call it quits with the group, no one wanted to. So the call went out for someone to take over the group and see where we could go with it. I volunteered to take over and the list became Artista-Adventures, or better known as AA. I started writing some digitizing lessons for the beginners and it quickly turned into a lesson a month. Last year I was approached by a company asking me if I would be interested in doing some digitizing for them. To date I have digitized 34 design packs for them.

For the future:
I've been asked to teach in a few cities throughout the U.S. so we are going to make travel plans to fit in as many places as I can. I will also continue to write the digitizing lessons and between digitizing design packs for the other company, I will be doing more of my own.

Personal info:
My husband and I have been married for 25 years and have 3 children and 7 grandchildren. We now reside in Saskatchewan and I'm very grateful for an inside job when winter hits! But on the positive side, we are close to all of the kids.