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Our Story

My husband, Mark, and I are both software engineers having started our careers many years ago at AT&T Bell Labs near Chicago. Like the pioneers of the 1800s, we moved our family westward to California 30+ years ago in search of adventure and opportunity. We never imagined at the time that our journey would take us from the high-tech corporate world to starting and running our own successful family business in the quilting market.

Sue Mezera Photo

Sue Mezera
President, Quilter's Paradise
Although quilting has been a passion of mine for roughly 40 years, there was a time when Mark wouldn't be caught "dead" in a quilt shop. That all changed when the business shifted from me doing Longarm quilting out of our house to running a small 1200 square foot quilt shop at the end of 2005. Mark, who long ago told me that he always wanted to run a business with me, quickly became involved and we feel lucky that we work so well together.

Laser Cutting Pioneers

 It didn't take long for that engineering mindset to kick in. Somewhere along the way we became aware that lasers could cut fabric. So, we asked: "That's really cool, but what can we make if we had a laser?" Next thing you know, we purchased our first laser in 2008 and started making laser-cut, fusible appliqué kits. We had no idea whether people would like and purchase these kits, but before long, we were making them by the thousands. Today, laser-cut kits are an accepted part of the mainstream and it's rewarding to have been an early pioneer in creating something so popular.

While our laser-cut business was expanding to include ever more kits along with acrylic rulers and templates, our retail shop grew to become one of Southern California's premier, destination quilt shops. It became quite a challenge to meet the demands from both parts of the business and it got to the point that we had to decide which one to pursue. As much as we loved working directly with quilters as customers, our true passion was in innovating and creating new products (that engineering mindset once again!). So, in late 2012, we reluctantly decided to close our retail storefront and made room for more lasers, more equipment and more people.

Building Photo

Pre-cuts and Fully Pre-Cut Kits

 We then began asking ourselves: "Can we do for pieced kits what we did for fused appliqué kits?" Answer: Of course! So, only a few months later in the spring of 2013, we acquired our first Gerber Cutter. Like the lasers, it is very accurate and programmable as to the shapes it cuts. We use it to not only make standard pre-cuts for a number of fabric manufacturers, but to also cut other shapes, such as hexagons, circles, tumblers, half-square triangles (with the tips cut off!) - and a lot more! What emerged were fully pre-cut kits where all you have to do is literally sit and sew! Demand for these kits increasing greatly because they save so much time and effort.

Quilt Calculators and the Patent-Pending Slit 'N SewTM Method

 Looking back, the common thread in our history, innovation and quality, has always centered around our mission: Making Quilting Simpler. We're always asking ourselves: "What are the 'pain points'? How do we improve something?" That's why we pioneered laser-cut kits and fully pre-cut kits. That's what led us to create many of our CutRiteTM rulers and templates. That's why we developed the most popular and widely used free quilt calculators :   in our retail store, we were tired of having to manually figure out how much yardage a customer needed for a border or a binding or a backing. Once we wrote the software for ourselves, we wanted to share what we came up with so everyone could benefit. More recently, we asked ourselves: "How can we make piecing easier, faster and foolproof for quilters?" I, along with countless other quilters, don't want to spend the time and effort to pin or to paper piece ... too much hassle - and pain! There had to be a better way! And so we came up with the patent-pending Slit 'N Sew Method that makes curved piecing a snap because you literally do curved piecing by sewing straight!

Life is Serendipidous

 Mark is fond of telling the students that he coaches and advises at California State University - San Marcos that "Life is Serendipidous". In other words, life takes unexpected twists and turns and many times what happens is fortuitous - and we feel lucky when it does! That's exactly what happened in 2023 ... an unexpected opportunity arose in which we ended up selling that part of our business dealing with fabric cutting and kitting. What's left - and what we continue to do - is design and make acrylic rulers and templates, our Slit 'N Sew templates, as well as various other notions. Additionally, we continue to provide acrylic ruler and template production services to other sewing and quilting businesses.

It's been a very rewarding journey so far and we've been blessed to have helped, collaborated with and touched the lives of countless people all over the world. We eagerly anticipate the future ... what, exactly, will be we don't know, but we'll think of something!

Happy Quilting!
Signed Sue Picture





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Web site last updated October 7, 2025

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