From the classic Queen song, Another one bites the dust, we are thinking of this song today.

Another one bites the dust, Another one bites the dust, And another one gone, another one gone.

 It’s with a tinge of sadness that we are telling you that Amanda and I have decided to close Alan Teather Quilting this year. We started trading on 01.11.2019, 2 months before covid hit the UK!

 Covid was good for us as everyone had money to spend via Furlow, (Thank you Richi). Everyone had time because they were at home and eventually boredom got people looking to their “creative side”.

Because of covid, the austerity and paying back the covid money has put a strain on everyone. We have been trading well and are debt free as a business, but time has come to call it a day.

After Covid, The Russians went into the Ukraine and people saw a huge chance to screw us all out of more money with high utility prices. We all love to buy new fabric but if you have an £800 gas bill or some new fabric to buy, which are you going to choose to pay first?

Also, as many of you know I have a chronic back problem. It started in the military humping huge Bailey Bridge panels around (Royal Engineers Sappers will know about these) and carrying the likes of 150 pounds of kit and weapons over long marches to get the job done!

This continued in civvy street with a couple of industrial accidents where I broke a couple of vertebrae and squashed a few discs. Anyone who has a bad back knows it only goes one way from there and that is downhill. I’ve kept going all this time, with the military ideal imprinted on my mind of getting the job done no matter the pain but there comes a point, after doing this for 40 years when even I have to own up to myself that I’m not the 23 yr old I wanted to be for life.

 At 63, and 60 for Amanda we need to look at what time we have left and how to spend that,  I don’t plan to be a 90 something slavering in a chair in some nursing home.

We have been planning for a couple of years now to have a Extra Long Wheel Base Mercedes Sprinter van conversion and tour the country. If we don’t do that now then it will just be another “what if” idea we never done because we continued to be part of the conformist, (Conform, Consume, Obey,) society, we are born and bred to believe in.

So we will be closing down ATQ this year, (see I don’t put a date on it because that is real) but the plans, at the moment, are to reduce our fabric stock and see where that goes.

For a while we will be keeping the longarm on for our wonderful clients that we serve both nationally and internationally but even that will go by the year end.  If you have a quilt in the queue divin worry, we are not leaving yet, lol.

 So, if you want a beautiful small business with a shed load of potential, high quality products and a hugely wonderful client list that really are incredibly good people, then contact us and see if we can come to some agreement for you to take over the business et al.

 When the van idea come to fruition, then I will be “The Travelling Quilter”, I already have the website, lol and we will be teaching, doing group work, exhibitions, online tuition in quilting, but above all not working 60 hours a week for nothing.

Thank you for reading, please be assured that you will not be getting rid of us just yet, lol.

Remember the 30% discount code is Stock30 when you spend over £30.00.

Thank you 

Alan & Amanda