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Digitizer's Profile

Visit Rease's Realistic Design's Embroidery Site  

My name is Mary of "Rease's Realistic Designs". My husband Gene and I have four children and nine grandchildren.

We live in a very small City (pop. 1300) in Central Lower Michigan where I was born on my family's farm just out side of the City. I was the youngest of three girls. My mother was an excellent seamstress but only had time to make clothes for the oldest daughter, which were then handed down to my next oldest sister and then to me.

I decided to learn to sew when I was about eleven years old because I got tired of wearing hand-me-downs that did not fit all that well, and were not "my style". I would take the dresses apart and make skirts out of them, or use the material to make blouses, etc.

I continued my love of sewing after I was married and began having our children. I made many of their every day and School clothes. I made Curtains, Bedspreads, tablecloths, and just about anything else that could be sewn. When I went to work outside the home when my children started School I made most of my dressy clothing for work.

Our youngest Son was in the eighth grade he was trying to decide what he wanted to Major in High School to prepare him for when he went on to College. He decided on something to do with Computers so I bought my first computer and taught myself how to use it. I then went on to building and repairing Computers. He went on to become a very successful Computer Programmer.

In about 1992 or '93 I heard about "Computerized Sewing Machines". Since this combined two of my passions I HAD to have one, the Viking #1. A couple of years later Viking came out with a stand-alone Embroidery Machine that ran off the computer. It was a Huskygram and looked like a big old-fashioned telephone. A smaller version of Wilcom software came with the machine, which also included a rudimentary Digitizing portion. I taught myself to digitize with this software, mainly by watching other peoples designs sew out.

For many years I digitized only for myself. Then I met other people who had home embroidery machines and began digitizing their hand-drawn designs for them.

In 2002 I retired from my job as an Office Manager for a Concrete Contractor and took up digitizing at home full time. I put together some sets I had digitized from my photos of Birds and Roses and sent them to a Yahoo group I belong to, MichiganEmbroiderers, for those who wanted could test sew and evaluate them for me.

I read an email on one of the groups I belong to in 2003 from Jackie about starting up an embroidery mall named "Oregon Patchworks". I contacted her and sent her the sets I had ready. I was accepted and the "rest is history", as they say.

People all over the United States and Canada, and all over the World now purchase my designs. I have customers in Australia, New Zeeland, Norway, Sweden, England, German, Italy, and Greenland, just to name a few. My hubby and I are just fascinated every time an order comes in from a different country.

My years with OPW have been some of the most enjoyable of my life, and I look forward to the next twenty or more if my hands, eyes and mind hold out that long.