Ann The Gran Community

In the late nineties my husband surprised me with one of the new “fancy” sewing machines that also did embroidery. I think he was more impressed with it than I was in the beginning! I was very intimidated by the technology and really didn’t sew my first embroidery stitch until 8 months after I got the machine. But once I did, I never looked back! Suddenly a whole new world of sewing opened up to me! I was monogramming anything that would sit still long enough! The only problem? I couldn’t find enough things to monogram on. I wanted a place where I could go to shop for lots of embroidery blanks! Up to this point my corporate job was in the buying office of a large department store and I knew some sources that offered beautiful linen pieces that were perfect for embroidering. I started thinking that if I were looking for items like this, maybe other embroiderers were looking for the same thing. All I can say is you never know what you’ll be doing. On a whim I signed up to be a vendor at an embroidery-related conference and hoped other embroiderers like all my pretty linen products. I showed up at the conference and nervously started taking my wares out of the boxes. What if no one wanted it? Guess what---they did! I couldn’t get the product out of the boxes fast enough. I can remember thinking that my life just changed and started heading in a different direction. I ran back home and put together the website that has become “AllAboutBlanks.com”. I’ve spent the last six years taking the business from my living room into a “real” office, and trying to find a balance between work and family and sewing---I think that’s something we all share in common. Everyone in the office uses the embroidery machines for personal use and we are still REAL embroidery enthusiasts. The items we choose to sell on our website are the items we like to embroider on ourselves! We strive to treat the customer the way we want to be treated and really we just want the home embroiderer to enjoy the hobby as much as we do. After 10 years of loving my embroidery machine, I still find I have as much passion and love for the hobby as I did on that first day when I stared at the machine and wondered what to do next. Who knew that 10 years down the road I’d be helping so many others enjoy the hobby too!