CEO of In Blue Handmade Mary Lynn Schroeder in Sophie Magazine

Sophie Magazine recently did a profile piece on Mary Lynn Schroeder, CEO and Lead Designer of In Blue Handmade.An excerpt reads:In 2008, she quit her job and moved to a small farm in southern Illinois, with the intention of becoming more self-sufficient. On the way, she stopped the moving van at a Jo-Ann Fabrics store and bought a Singer home sewing machine. “I went in and said, ‘Hey, I think I wanna sew stuff!’” says Schroeder. “Even then, in my head, I thought: ‘I’m going to make curtains and fix my jeans.’ I had no intention of making this my career.” Schroeder has been sewing every day since then.Schroeder started small, making purses, pouches and doing small alterations, which she found to be an excellent way to get to know her new community. One day in late 2009, Schroeder got a package from her parents. It was a piece of remnant hide from airplane upholstery that her father had won on Ebay. They thought she might be able to make something out of it. She did: her first journal. Since then, leather has become Schroeder’s medium of choice. “I like the way it feels a lot. I like the way that you can construct with it. It’s different than fabric,” she says. “I would say it’s right in between fabric and wood. You can work structurally with it, but it’s more pliable than a wood would be; kind of a denser, more durable fabric. So, it really just seems like the perfect utility to me.”