Business Innovators Radio - The Inspired Impact Podcast with Judy Carlson-Interview with Dr. Linda Kimberling, Owner, Log Cabin Quilt’N Sew

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

Dr. Linda Kimberling—Retired Federal Executive, Educator, Business Owner, Author, Foster Ministry Founder, Mother, Grandmother and QuilterDr. Kimberling overcame early-life obstacles to serve the American public for 30 years in various leadership and managerial roles in the U.S. Government. Her tenure included Senior Executive Service member for 10 years in positions of Assistant Commissioner and Chief Financial Officer at Treasury and Department of Energy. She holds a doctoral degree in Organization and Management, a MS in Economics and a BS in Business and Education. As an educator, she served on the faculty at Regis Jesuit University and Southern Illinois University teaching Graduate Studies in Ethics, Leadership and Economics.She combined her experience in executive leadership, her education in organization and management, and her experiences as a Christian leader to author the book: “Faith Based Leadership–When the Odds are Stacked Against You”.Currently, she is the business owner of Log Cabin Quilt’N Sew offering long-arm quilting services and fabric to her customers. Log Cabin Quilt’N Sew fulfills her longtime passion to create and gift quilts to foster children currently in child placement facilities. Through the help of 70+ women across the country, “My Very Own Quilt Ministry” made and gifted over 700 quilts to foster children.Together, she and her husband live in Castle Rock, CO. They have 5 adult children and 6 grandchildren that keep them busy!www.logccabinquiltnsew.comhttps://www.facebook.com/logcabinquiltnsewhttps://www.instagram.com/logcabinquiltn/*************************************************************Judy is the CEO & Founder of the Judy Carlson Financial Group. She helps her clients design, build, and implement fully integrated and coordinated financial plans from today through life expectancy and legacy.She is an Independent Fiduciary and Comprehensive Financial Planner who specializes in Wealth Decumulation Strategies. Judy is a CPA, Investment Advisor Representative, Life and Health Insurance Licensed, and Long-Term Care Certified.Judy’s mission is to educate and empower her clients with an all-inclusive financial plan that encourages and motivates them to pursue their lifetime financial goals and dreams.Learn More: https://judycarlson.com/ Investment Adviser Representative of and advisory services offered through Royal Fund Management, LLC, an SEC Registered Adviser.The Inspired Impact Podcasthttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-inspired-impact-podcast/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-inspired-impact-podcast-with-judy-carlson-interview-with-dr-linda-kimberling-owner-log-cabin-quiltn-sew

Welcome to the Inspired Impact Podcast, where dedicated female professionals share how they inspire impact every day. Authentic stories, passionate commitment, lives transformed. I'm your host, Judy Carlson. Welcome to today's episode of the Inspired Impact Podcast. Today I'm so excited to introduce you to a remarkable and very important. very humble woman, Dr. Linda Kimberling. Linda, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Judy. I so appreciate you inviting me to join both you and your listeners today, so I'm excited to get started. Yay, now I haven't done this much on other podcasts, but I just have to

share something. So my life intersected your life fairly recently last summer, because my daughter and I had made a couple of quilts and I was on nextdoor.com looking for someone to help us do the quilting piece of it. And we got connected and we came down and worked with you and we have gorgeous quilts to show for it. And then I invited you to be on the podcast and you sent in your biography and all of a sudden I'm like, oh my gosh, there is so much to this woman. And I only Nora's a quilter. So I am so excited to have you share a lot of your journey. So where would you like to start? Thank you so much. You know, the quilting, actually, I have been quilting for 45 years. I think I had shared with you before. And so basically, since I was a young child,

and I'm actually going to start even before that, because that leads into something that I'd like to share later in the show, which is about my foster ministry. And it actually has its roots in my very beginning journey of my life and all of this kind of, there's a thread that runs all the way through it, no pun in text. Yeah, I was just going to say that's an awesome. And it honestly, it really does. So I was actually orphaned when I was an infant and then have. had been in multiple foster homes until I was five years old. And, you know, you have a lot of memories when you're five, lots of challenges. I actually, the foster, the last foster home that I was in was about an hour south of St. Louis, Missouri, and it was in a farm, on a farm, with a two-story

farmhouse. We had no plumbing, no indoor plumbing. We had, so there are no indoor restaurants. We actually had an outhouse. This was in the very early 1960s. No heat to the house. It was all heated by wood, fireplace. We slept on a floor with two of my other foster siblings. And there were nine total foster children in the home at the time.

You know, so there wasn't much attention there. You know, and you learn a lot of resilience. you learn to do for yourself, you know, you learn self-sufficiency, those kinds of things when you start out that way. But that's where I had the foster connection. So I'm going to talk about that a little bit later. That, you know, led to, I was fortunately adopted when I was five. And there were more challenges there that came. My adopted father actually struggled with alcoholism.

and, you know, lots of other things for those who have family members or no friends that have been through raised in alcoholic families, you know, a lot of the challenges that come from that and that, you know, you need to overtime, overcome. One of the things, my father only had a sixth grade education on top of that. So lots of, you know, people think about, oh, my goodness, those are all such tragedies and such difficult way to start out life. But there were so many, looking back on it and processing it through my adult life. There were so many benefits that came from it that led to being a leader in the workplace

and learning to be self-sufficient, learning to be compassionate for others. And a lot of those, some of it were, you know, some of the foster children that I knew came even with less than I had. My father, who wasn't able to read very well when I was in third grade, would ask me, when he would be trying to read a book, would ask me what was a certain word or so I would be there showing him how to read that. And he also had a very difficult stuttering problem that just really impeded his ability to communicate.

So I would help him often with finishing centers. for him and such when we would be out and about at a store or something when he would be struggling. So it also developed a lot of leadership skills for me as well. But during that time in that adopted home, going back to how you said that we met, so when I was roughly seven years old, my adopted grandmother, she was an embroiderer. And all of the women in that family, in my family, were a sewist of one type or another. My own mother, she put me into a sewing class at seven years old to learn how to just sew clothing, because that's what we did back in those days in the mid-60s.

And this was when fabric was $1.10 a yard, by the way. Now, you know how much cost Judy told you these days to get a yard of. fabric. So it definitely was more economical to make your own clothing. And that's why we did that. But I was still proud to learn that. And at the end of that six-week sewing class that I was in, we had a little fashion show for all of the girls that made, you know, that we all made our little dresses. So I learned the basics from my mom. And then my grandmother, she was an embroiderer, and she would hand-embroider footblocks. And I, learned next to her knee how to embroider. She would put the hoop and everything into my hands,

and then I would start on one of the other blocks and do copy what she was doing. And then I also had an aunt who was a hand quilter. And so all of this came together. My mom would sew the blocks together and that my grandma had embroidered and I helped her with some of those. And then my aunt had a wooden quilting frame in her family room and she would hand quilt them when they were all finished and then my mom would bind it at the end so it truly was a family affair if you will and and that's where I learned how to do that and I just so enjoyed the art of sewing and quilting it was very stress-releading it kind of you know you'll hear of athletes that runners in particular that will say that they just love to lose themselves in the act of running.

You know, they're just thinking about one foot in front of the other. And what that means is they're kind of putting out of their minds all of the negative things that are there, the things that are holding them down and whatnot. And sewing and quilting did that for me. And so I kept doing that as a hobby, I guess, is what we'd call it. that. And then when I became a young mother at 19, which was quite young, I had ended up purchasing my own wooden quilt frame that was in my family room. And I also started to teach quilting at the local quilt shop in Edwardsville, Illinois, where we lived by that time.

And then I wanted to have my own quilt shop, never had my own quilt shop, because life kind of took me off. off on all kinds of roads and it turned out that I ended up working for the federal government and I ended up retiring from them. So needless to say, my quilting as a business went on hold for the next three decades. But I always continued to quilt for the family. All of my kids had tons of quilts on the beds and I would help my women friends, young women friends. They would come over and a couple of times, you know, we would have kind of, you remember the old term quilting bee. We would have people, ladies there that would help me quilt at either ends of the quilting frame and we would finish theirs and I'd finish mine and it was just kind of,

it was kind of fun. It was a place to create community, you know, share information about what was going on, talk about our kids and, you know, help each other through our challenges that we were having raising our kids as a young mom, I went to school. I'm going to backtrack us here. I went to college. I didn't have a college degree at that point. In fact, my mother, my adopted mother, keep in mind, we're from two separate generations, right? Our parents at our age, they were born and raised in the Depression era. And so to my mother, when I asked to go to college and I wanted to become a doctor, medical doctor is what I wanted to be. And she, honest to goodness, stood there in the kitchen and said, well, there isn't any money for you to go to college. That money has to go to

your brother. And not only that, but you'll just drop out of college anyway. So you need to take typing in high school. You would just drop out of college and you'd get married. So the best thing for a woman is to have typing and be a secretary. So that's what I did. That. is what I did. And, but at that same time, as I looked at her in the kitchen saying that to me, I could, I can remember it to this day that in my mind, I was thinking to myself, watch me. Yep. I'm going to have an education. I'm going to have a college degree, no matter what. And so in that first, I was started at the local community college in my first accounting class. when I got my first job at 17 years old with the federal government as a secretary.

So I was putting myself through, I didn't care how long it took, and that was kind of in my mind. I didn't care how long it took, but I was going to have a college degree. And so I would go at nights and on weekends and certainly couldn't afford to go to a university, but I ended up getting my two-year degree, my associate's degree, and then transferred that into Southern Illinois University and then went on eventually to get a master's degree. But, you know, and by this time I had three children all under the age of five. So I would get up, well, I would go to bed, put them down to bed.

It may be eight, seven, eight at night. and then I would study, and then I would not get to bed until maybe midnight or one o'clock, and I would sleep for about four or five hours, and then they were up for feedings and changings and whatever at about five in the morning or six. And then I was back to school in the evening, and so you can imagine how that was working. That only works, by the way, when you're a very young woman. And you have that, looking back on it now, I don't know how in the world I did that, but I did. And I ended up graduating.

And, you know, I was the first college graduate in both my biological family and my adopted family. And something that that, and my husband reminds me of this all the time, he said, whenever I look at you and I hear the things that you committed to do and you did, it just proves to me that when you really want something, you can get it. It doesn't matter if someone tells you you can't or that you don't have the money or that you're working two or three jobs or you have children at home with you. You will find a way. Yeah. You know, yeah. It's, and that's pretty exciting that nobody else can hold you back.

Nobody else can move down. You know, it doesn't. That's, you put a plan together. Yep. And you put it in bite-sized pieces that you can chunk away at it so that you can, you know, sell. I can remember thinking that a four-year degree was so an enormous prospect to take on with those children. And I actually would have a chart on my little bulletin board that would show the classes that I had to take just in the next semester. And once I would have those done, I would check them off so I could show, okay, I made progress.

I'm done. You know, I would just, that commitment is really important. and knowing that you can do it and nobody can hold you down. Right. And it comes from within. Yes, it really does. It really does. You worked for the federal government and you must have had more children.

Is that right? Well, we're a blended family. So I have five children. Okay. Yes. We're almost like two separate generations. My three are in their 40s. And then I have Austin and McKenna and with my husband, Kevin.

and they are in their 30s, early 30s. Okay. So those two children are from you and your current husband. So you gave birth to five children. No, no, no, no, no. No, I'm sorry. I misunderstood. They joined me when they were little toddlers.

Oh, well, not toddlers. Let's see. Trying to remember McKenna, she was four. She was about four. And then Austin was seven. Yeah. Okay. Their siblings were a good 10 years older.

Yes, yes. Yeah, my oldest was already in college. Wow. I always say, we'll always have young babies in the house. We're going to have a long stream of them, you know. Right, because your oldest are then having children in there. Yes, exactly. cycle of life.

We are at the end. Oh my gosh. Wow. So you went on and you did get a doctorate degree? I did. I did. So it was a number of years between my master's degree and starting my doctorate. I actually, I was at the General Services Administration for about 15 years.

And boy, I saw a lot of. corruption there and just read very old systems, computer systems. I mean, they hardly had a computer system. You talk about the old ones from the very early 1980s is what was said. They were huge. They looked like a mainframe sitting on your desk. They're like what we have now, right? But, you know, in my mind, I stayed there much longer than I should have.

Without getting like all I need to tell you, anybody that watches the news, these days and sees all of the political games that go on and the corruption that is going on out there doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on. It's there. I have served for 30 years in the federal government for both sides of the aisle and there are multiple presidents. And it doesn't matter. Neither side is doing it with the kind of ethics and integrity that, you know, I certainly wish that we would have had. Sure. And so I ended up finally, and I will say it this way, I finally had the courage.

And this is one of the lessons that I learned in the workplace, is to not be afraid to move on. Number one, don't think that you are only as good as the current job that you have and listening to people that will tell you, oh, my goodness, you know, you have a great thing here. what are some of the other things that you hear? The devil you know is better than the one you don't. I mean, all of these things to kind of keep you harnessed in not to move forward. And those are people that are, you know, they're afraid themselves to take a step out and explore something better. You know, heaven forbid we would take a step into the unknown and find something that is better than where we are, right?

But I bought into that for the longest time I bought into that kind of negativity. And also people saying to me, well, you know, that's quitting or that's giving up. And you know what? That was something that I learned that when is it okay to leave? You don't want to just leave. I mean, all jobs have difficulty, right? You're always going to work for a boss somewhere along the way that you don't like, that you don't agree with.

There's always going to be policies that you have to implement that, you know, I finally adopted the philosophy that if it's not illegal, I can implement those policies, right? As long as it's not hurting someone or it's not illegal, basically. But what I came to realize is that when you're in a job, a career, that the organization that you work for, their value system, no longer aligns with yours, that's when it surpasses just being a difficult work environment. That's when you have to start asking yourself, is this a good fit for where I want to be in a day?

And it may well have been a good fit when you first started. Things change. Bosses change. The environment changes. You grow. You learn new things. And you see the world through a different lens. The older you become, the more experience you have, right?

So therefore, when I came to that realization, I realized, you know what, I'm better than this. I can do better than this. So I started applying for jobs and I received a promotion at the U.S. Geological Service. The U.S. Geological Service, the Department of Interior, they are all PhDs just about. Everyone that I worked with was a PhD. And I had wanted to be a university professor back to. when, back way back when, right? But as I said, life got in the way. And I just wasn't able to continue with a doctorate at that time. In fact, I started and then I dropped out very, very early on. So this inspired me being with all of these fellow educators and scientists and the majority of them were scientists. And they were just wonderful people. And I loved the research philosophy. And so that's what inspired me. I thought, you know, I can do this. And then I kind of created again, that resurgence of wanting to be an educator full time. And so I did end up going back to school. Again, I was nights and on weekends while I was working during the day. I've never done it the easy way.

I just wasn't playing for ease to ease. I had your luxury, you know. So, and then I did get to become an educator. I taught for Regis Jesuit University. And actually, before that, I was an Agenda faculty member for the Southern Illinois University in economics. So it's kind of always kind of been, again, a thread that has run through my life, education and whatnot.

So that's when I was able to finish my doctorate degree. And just so many things I think I've learned through all of that experience in the workplace and in education and, you know, just the motivation. Again, going back to that commitment and resilience and just not giving up. And, you know, and even if there's an obstacle that's in the way, if you have to switch jobs, if you have to move to another. state, you can pick up the majority of those credits and take them, maybe not all of them, but certainly some of them, if you're committed to wanting to get that degree, it doesn't have to be the picture perfect way. I certainly was not the picture perfect way. If it was, it would have been go to school, then get married, then have your kids. Yeah, didn't do it that way.

What brought your family to Colorado, Linda? That was actually what they refer to as a reduction in force, a riff in the federal government. My ex-husband and I had worked for the Department of Defense back in the 80s. And there were all of that political, kind of like what a lot of the federal civil servants are seeing right now, where there's downsizing. And so there's usually a political strife in there between. different counties and different states. If you have regional offices,

one regional office in that time it was St. Louis, there was a fight between St. Louis, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois, over where the regional office should be located. And it turned out that it went to Chicago. And in that rift, there were multiple jobs available that my husband wanted to pursue. And we had three different locations, and Denver was one of them.

And so after coming out and visiting and whatnot, and we did have some family that lived in the springs at that time, that's what brought us. That's what brought us out here. Wow. So then after retirement, is that when you finally got to start your quilt shop? Or was there other situations or circumstances in between? Or how did that all come about?

Well, it was, you know, so, yeah, so what was it? 2017, I finally decided, you know, I would, I think I had seen enough in the federal government. I had, we were, and that was actually, President Trump was in office at that time, and they were, again, looking at downsizing and whatnot. And the beauty of having experiences, you know, you live through these things. I was able to go full circle back as a chief financial officer for them at the time, for the organization I was working, for at the time. I was leading the effort to kind of restructure, reorganize, how do we do this, and trying to explain to my staff who were relatively new. Some of them only had maybe 10 years, five years of employment with the government, and they were worried to death. Of course,

they had young children at home and, you know, what's going to happen. And I was able to share with them my own experience from back in the 80s and how this doesn't, regardless of what they say about it happening overnight, just like that. And everyone's going, you know, 40% is going to lose their job. You know, there are all of these policies and laws and procedures in place that it's much more orderly than what the pundits and all of the newscasters would have you believe out there. So you kind of have to keep your head focused on the job that you're working on and kind of

avoid or ignore some of the noise in the background or on the periphery so that you don't get lost and make some bad judgments for your family, you know, about moving too quickly and just trying to inspire them and give them hope that it's not all going to come to an end overnight. So let's just all be focused and let's try to help process by finding out how can we streamline things and where can we reduce costs and that kind of thing so that we can show the value of our employment and not that you're a drain on taxpayers and whatnot because I think many times our taxpayers that we serve don't necessarily realize all of the work that those civil servants are doing on their behalf because sometimes that can be overshadowed.

But so I, you know, at the end of that, I came up on my 30 years then in two, 2018 and I just made a conscious decision. I think I'm ready. And once I made that decision, I started thinking, well, what do I want to do? I'm not really ready to actually retire and sit in a rocking chair just yet. And I, so, you know, I kind of examined the alternatives out there about going and working for and continuing in finance and being in corporate America or going into consulting. and I just, throughout my life, I had been a quilter, and I always wanted to have my own quilt shop back from when I was very young, and I thought, you know, this is an opportunity to go into business for myself and just see how that works.

And it never occurred to me that it wouldn't work. Just because that's kind of my philosophy after all this time. As one way or another, I'm going to make it work once I decide that something is in my future and I want to do that. So I knew it was in my future that I wanted to have a business that I, a quilting business that I had originally wanted back when I was really young. And so I became really excited starting to plan about it, read up on putting together a business plan and activity and kind of a timeline of how I would go about this. I ended up taking some of my retirement funds and putting that into the investment of my quilting frame,

which is now a quilting machine, basically. It's an industrial sewing machine that I provide a service then to my customers to quilt their quilts, the three layers, sandwiching them together. And then I also sell fabric that goes with that, which is extra wide fabric, which is kind of fun because that you get to get involved with all the color selection, and production and inventory. So on the business end of it, I'm everything. I'm the inventory.

I do the inventory. I do the purchasing, the accounting, the marketing, the sewing. So I'm kind of a one-man band, if you go, a one-man show. It doesn't have to be that way. But I kind of made a conscious decision that I wanted to do that, to just kind of keep it relatively small. I'm not interested in being coming one of the corporate quilt shops or organizations. So I do it out of my home, and that way I'm able to keep it just kind of an appropriate size

so that I can also work with my foster ministry effort, which is just really, really important to me. And I sometimes think to myself that this was the journey the good Lord took me on to get me to what the ultimate endgame was, which was to help those foster children have a sense of value and something that they could own that could help them feel important that they could take with them is a quilt that is gifted to each of them when they enter the foster organization here in Colorado.

Because that's ultimately, I could sometimes feel that that was my ultimate journey. Sometimes it's not about how much money you make. It's not about the title that you have, that you have. It's not about who you know. It's about impacting someone's life, and it couldn't be someone that no one else knows, but we know that they're being impacted, and the good Lord knows their name. He knows who they are. Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about how you started the quilting ministry and the impact that it's had. Well, that was a leap of faith. You know, I wasn't

really sure how to go about it. And I, the first thing that I did was I looked up on the internet foster organizations in the state of Colorado. And then I started, I went to a couple of them and explained my story about having been in an orphanage and understanding the, the mindset of a child that is fostered, especially an older child that has been moved from place to place. And in many cases, and I actually learned that the foster organizations, as hard as they try and as much improved as they are, it's still as much the same way as it was back in the 50s and 60s when I was there, that everything that they own is in a paper bag. Today, it would be plastic. For me, it was a paper grocery bag sitting on the front seat. And when you left the foster

home, sometimes these children are re-homed multiple times. That's for many reasons, but sometimes they are, and frequently they're not allowed to take whatever they have with them or whatever they have been given. In my case, it was a doll. And the doll, when I was taken away from the arms of my foster mother, I had my doll, which I thought was my doll, but my foster mother said that it was my sisters, my foster siblings doll. And so they took that from me and put me into the car with the people that came to take me away that day. And it stayed in my mind for the rest of my life. that it's not right that children are not, because that is so important to a child to have stability, to have things that are enduring, something that does not, it can't be taken away from them.

And so I think that's one of the things that brings about many of the challenges that foster children have is because of that environment that they're in. and I don't believe that anyone means ill will. It's just the situation that they are in that causes things like that to happen. So his time went on and I felt that I was truly blessed. Despite where I began, I feel like the Lord has a plan for all of us from the beginning to the end. And I can see from my very beginning roots, as maybe some would see them as very dark. certainly did at certain times in my life. I can see how those beginnings impacted in a positive way

many of the phases of my journey in life that went along. So I know that he was involved all the way, and he taught me that much older, which is a part of the book that I wrote, faith-based leadership when the odds are stacked against you is you can see him in there every single day of my life and including this final chapter I feel which is the foster ministry and how he never let me forget where I came from but he put pearls from where I came from into every walk of life that I am and so I'm joyous about that and I'm so thrilled to be able to be able to to give the foster children that may never, they won't, the likelihood will they won't ever know me, but they will know their own personal sense of value because they have something to hold

on to that they've been given no matter where they go. Yeah. That's incredible. Wow. Well, thank you. I'm just blessed. You are blessed. I am blessed. And you see the cup half full all the time and your light shines brightly, Linda. Oh, thank you. That's, thank you. If people would like to get a hold of you for a variety of reasons, whether it's for the quilting side of things or your ministry side of things, are there special places people should go to learn? Sure, sure. So for the business, you can contact me through email, Linda at Log Cabin Quilt N, as in Nancy, so s eW.com. You can also contact me on my personal email, which is L.S. Kimberling at gmail.com.

And that personal email, I can help you locate the book, Faith-Based Leadership, or I'm happy to help you if you want to create a ministry, something similar using your quilting skills, your sewing skills. If you would like to be part of that ministry, we have over 70 ladies. And they're throughout the agency. Yes, we have some in Florida, some in Sugar Land, Texas. Many of them throughout the state of Colorado, and they send in their quilt tops. And either myself or some of the other ladies that do long-arm quilting, quilt them together, and then we bind them, we share them. So, yes, I don't do this myself by any stretch of the imagination. We have gifted over 700 quilts now to foster children in the last five years. Yeah. So we would love to have anyone that would like to participate with their sewing skills and quilting skills. That would be, we would be so blessed to have you join us.

Yeah. Wow. Amazing how your life has really come full circle. And the quilting is going to be what you started with and probably what you end with. And what an amazing story. So inspiring. That makes me so excited. Yeah, it's so exciting. Well, thank you. So the name of your business, is log cabin quilt and sew. Yes. Okay, so if someone wanted to look online to find that. Yes, we have a great website. And there's a contact form on there. There's also a newsletter.

There's the fabrics that are all available to purchase. You can reach me through there as well if you need a long arm quilter and here for you. Yeah, it's amazing. And I have ladies also that will email every once. and a while they're from other states. They don't come here. They're not having the quilting done by me, but they just have questions. How do you figure out how large thus and so should be? Or how do I attach this? So I'm happy to answer any of those questions that gals have.

Yeah. Well, you have an absolutely gorgeous quilt store, and I love being there. So thank you, Linda. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been wonderful and a great blessing. Thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me. Thanks so much for joining us for the Inspired Impact Podcast. To listen to past episodes, please visit theinspiredimpactpodcast.com.