Karen Montgomery is good at piecing things together — in more ways than one.
Mrs. Montgomery, of Hampton, is owner of The Quilt Co. Inc. and is a fabric designer, pattern designer, writer, teacher and marketer. This week, she’ll have an active role at the International Quilt Market, a trade show at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown. She’ll teach workshops, help to market the fabric she designs and her own line of patterns, and welcome many of those attending the market to her shop in Hampton. Mrs. Montgomery, 51, has owned The Quilt Co. for 15 years, but she has been sewing a lot longer than that. “I think I’ve sewn forever,” she said. “My mom was an excellent seamstress and taught me.” She learned other crafts in her various jobs, which included working as a regional coordinator for Leewards craft store. One of those crafts was quilting. “I learned a lot of crafts, but quilting was something I loved right away and knew I would want to do it forever,” she said. The plan to open her shop began when the family was living in New Hampshire and the company her husband, Cary, worked for wanted to transfer them to south central Las Angeles.
“We knew that we didn’t want to move our family there,” said Mrs. Montgomery, a native of Hampton. “He said that maybe it was a good time to move back home and open the quilting store that I kept talking about.”