Jenny Doan - Missouri Star Quilt Co Tutorials

Jenny Doan is a prominent quilter and founder of the Missouri Star Quilt Company. She is a grandmother who turned a hobby into a multi-million dollar business. She has been called "The most famous quilter in the world" due to her over 300 YouTube video tutorials that have been viewed more than 50 million times. In 2015, two of her children who handled the business end of Star Quilt received the national SBA Small Business Persons of the Year award.

Missouri Star Quilt Company

In 2008 Doan and her family founded the Missouri Star Quilt Company and began producing weekly tutorials on YouTube. The company was started with a sewing machine in a dilapidated brick building in downtown Hamilton, Missouri serving as a shop.

Today, the Missouri Star Quilt Company processes 30,000 orders each month for pre-cut patches and other quilting supplies, and has become the second-largest employer in Hamilton, employing 200 people. The company also operates a "sleep and sew" retreat hotel for tourists, which was built in 2013 by demolishing the walls of two adjoining premises.

Hamilton, with a population of 1,800, hosts between five and ten thousand visitors each month who come to meet Doan. According to Doan, the company’s appeal is based on making it easy to quilt. Visitors are taught how to use pre-cut fabric to make a quilt in as little as a day, instead of the usual months.

Career

Doan learned to sew with the 4-H Club youth organization at the age of ten. As a newlywed she sewed costumes for the local theater group, and after her children left home she took her first quilting class at the Grand River Technical School in Chillicothe, Missouri. She is the published author of numerous articles and quilting patterns, contributes to the company-owned quilting magazine, BLOCK.

Personal life

Doan and her husband Ron live in the small town of Hamilton, Missouri and love the rural life. Ron worked as a machinist with the Kansas City Star. They have seven children and twenty-two grandchildren.