PiBurner of the week: Cathe Ray
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Let’s celebrate our PiBurner of the week:
Cathe Ray
aka The Floss Queen
owner of
Needle In A Haystack
About Cathe
We are so excited to tell you about Cathe – she is simply wonderful and her journey is a beautiful one full of inspiring lessons.
Cathe has been a needleworker for almost her entire life, for 60 years now (how cool is that?!)
To her husband, her customers, and her friends, Cathe is known as the Floss Queen.
Long before she opened her needlework shop her husband always called her his Floss Queen because she loved using threads of all kinds and he thinks of her as his queen, of course! They will be celebrating 37 years of marriage this month.
Well, thanks to hubby Carl, the name stuck and became her brand.
Cathe’s Story
Cathe has been a maker most of her life and has tried most crafts at one time or another. In college, in the late 70’s she majored in Textiles, but got the software bug and pursued a degree in Computer Science.
Well, working in high tech wasn’t enough of a challenge for Cathe (naturally!) and she opened a retail needlework shop in 1997, intending it to provide for her retirement in her 60’s – and that’s now!
Getting laid off from her main job a few years later (by this time she was already a manager!) turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it let her focus more on her business and her customers. After some soul searching, she decided that she liked working for herself and helping other makers a lot more than working for large corporations.
So rather than go back to the world of high tech, she went to work in her needleworking shop full time to follow her true life’s passion.
She credits two people that were key in this decision. Her husband, Carl who believed she can do anything she puts her mind to. And C.A. Wells, who helped her understand that she could build a business as a side hustle without giving up her main job right away.
Of course, she has not led the journey alone and has had help from her fabulous staff over all of these years.
Her needlework shop is called Needle In A Haystack and is located in Alameda, California, just south of Oakland. Check it out online: http://www.needlestack.com/index.html
She was even on an old Mythbusters episode from the early 2000’s the one about how hard is it to find a needle in a haystack!
And because Cathe works with a lot of fabrics, she recently got a Vortex vacuum table from LensDigital as a hold-down solution. This is a nice addition to her growing arsenal of tools that will talk about later.
Check out the Fabrics section of her shop!
In September 2019 Cathe bought a Glowforge Basic as she’d been following them from their crowdfunding days. Owning that laser, she realized she needed even more. She now operates an Aeon Mira 7 with a Thunder Laser Odin 32 due in early 2022.
A little note from Cathe:
Working with lasers is special to me as it lets me combine my creative side and my technical/geeky side.
I love testing new materials, new tools and sharing that knowledge with other enthusiasts. I make and sell mostly needlework-related items as an adjunct to my needlework shop that I sell under my brand name The Floss Queen. I work a lot with acrylic as I love the many options it provides for materials.
I came across the PiBurn from my friend Emily Caroline (That Mom With A Laser) and even though I had a perfectly serviceable rotary, decided I needed to get one – who doesn’t need more cool tools!
I was blown away with how much easier it makes my projects, whether I’m doing a small run or a larger number of tumblers or cylindrical objects. And the support Stan and Len have given me is great. I’m looking forward to expanding my rotary usage and having even more hands on time with my PiBurn. The design on the tumbler in the photo was designed to look like cross-stitch, which is one of the needlework techniques my shop sells supplies for.
What motivates Cathe
We asked Cathe what drives her?
My motivation is to see projects or even customer orders in the shop, come to fruition. I’m inspired by all of the creativity I see both in my needlework community and the laser community. So many great ideas and great people.
So many people dream of doing what they love for a living. But it’s very hard for many as their passions don’t always come with steady paychecks. How did you do it?
For turning a hobby into a living…know that it takes blood, sweat and tears – or hustle in the current vernacular, to make it all happen. Be persistent in what you want, be willing to adapt and be willing to learn new things, whether that’s tools, procedures, materials or other things. And never let it become your sole reason for existence…family and friends in the mix of importance help balance it all so you don’t go insane.
What a beautiful lesson. Cathe reminds us that you can achieve your dream but it won’t be easy, it will require real determination and an open mind. But with your resourcefulness and the support from those you love you can do it!
Favorite Projects
Check out this amazing and unique design Cathe achieved on her PiBurn 3.0. The intricate detail is astonishing and can only be achieved on a high-end rotary device.
Thanks Cathe!
If you are like us and are inspired by Cathe’s story, go ahead and read up more about her shop at http://www.needlestack.com/about.html
We are so honored to put products out that help amazing makers like Cathe create beautiful things and build a true legacy. The PiBurn, the Vortex, these are all just tools, but what you create with them is pure magic.
For us, this is the main reason to keep on PiBurning!
Cathe Ray, Thank you!!! For being a maker, a leader, a giver, and an inspiration. And of course a PiBurner!
That’s all for today my friends, and Happy PiBurning!
Stan & Len
PS: Want to be a featured PiBurner yourself? Find out how!
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