Welcome! We're so glad you stopped by! After lots of work and seemingly endless nights, “The Quilting Barn” opened its doors on December 1, 2005, in Arlington, TN. We want to take this opportunity to welcome you to our barn and tell you a little about ourselves. As most of you know, we are two sisters (the only siblings in our family), Lynda Hoskins and Shelia Medlin. We owned a quilting shop 25 years ago when our children were small, and as Shelia says, "our children won the battle." We never got quilting out of our hearts and now that our children are grown, decided to open another shop. We searched for the perfect location, even considering building our own building until one afternoon Lynda's husband came home and said, "If you really are interested in opening another quilting shop, I've found the perfect location." The rest is history as we went the next day and gave a deposit on our barn, one of the oldest buildings in Arlington. We decided that we could build a new building but we could not build in old charm. The building has been refurbished and updated to meet modern county codes and we feel very blessed to have found this most ideal spot.

These two sisters knew about the work it would take to get everything up and running but weren’t quite prepared for some of the challenges. One joyful challenge was working closely together again as we had forgotten how very much alike we are in some ways and how different in others. Working with those differences can sometimes take some juggling, understanding and grace but most importantly, lots of love on both sides. For instance, the simple task of rearranging the classroom area. Being the bookkeeper partner, Shelia sees everything in black and white on graph paper! Everything is measured first and sometimes even tiny little pieces of furniture are designed to move around on the paper. Lynda is right the opposite - she can’t see much of anything on paper - she has to move the furniture and then move it again...and again. Needless to say, stressful for both of us. Shelia plays with her paper. Lynda wears herself out (and her sweet son) moving furniture but the end result is always “just right.” We’ve had to rethink several things to make the best use of our space. We haven’t quite learned how to say the little two letter word “no” yet. Every sales rep, every magazine we open, every pattern we see, is a new thing we want to share with you, our quilting friends. So, instead of learning that word, we’ve consolidated, rearranged, built new cabinets, rearranged again - whatever we could do to inch out more space.
I love the example Shelia used in one of her classes. When we were growing up we sang in church together. I sang the lead (soprano) and she sang harmony (alto). Alone, neither of us were professionals but put us together and we sounded really sweet together. She laughingly says that separately we can do a lot of things, but together, we’re willing to tackle almost anything. That’s kind of what makes our shop run smoothly and we think it’s a pretty good combination.

But, most importantly, barn days are running smoother each week, we’re settling into a groove and we’re loving The Quilting Barn and each other through it all. We want to send out a sincere thanks to you for all your support, kind words and enthusiasm upon the opening of our “Quilting Barn.” We hope we have a long relationship with all of you. Thanks for being so sweet to us and helping to make this a fun place to be. We have more ideas than we can process right now with lots of classes on our schedule. Our desire is that we both live long enough to accomplish everything that is in our hearts and heads! We so look forward to a lasting relationship with all of you. Blessings to you and yours, now and always.

We love you all.

Lynda and Shelia

Site Last updated March 19, 2007