“She has been there with me through everything. ... She just — for me — is the embodiment of everything good,” Timmerman said. “She's my baby. She's everything to me, so I had to incorporate her somehow.”

Nearly two years ago, the Bernaussie was there to help Timmerman through the loss of her grandma.

Timmerman’s grandparents lived with her growing up, and her grandmother is a large part of the reason BluThreads came to be – she helped her discover her love of embroidery.

She was able to take the base set from her grandmother and turn her hobby into something entirely her own.

“My grandma was very into embroidery and sewing and everything,” Timmerman said. “I picked it up while she was living with us, and it turned into something that I loved doing.”

Two summers ago, Timmerman saved up enough money to buy herself a nice embroidery machine and used it to make custom pieces for her and her friends.

The pieces started out as mostly shirts for Michigan State University football game days, and people started to take notice.

When girls in Timmerman’s apartment complex saw the shirts she made, they started asking where they could buy them. After explaining that she made them herself and did not have a shop, they immediately asked her to start one.

So, she did.

When Timmerman first started embroidering pieces, she did it all by hand as a way to relieve some stress, but after a lot of practice, she was able to get pretty good at it.

“I have anxiety. It turned into kind of a coping mechanism,” Timmerman said. “When I would get anxious, I would just pick up something to do because it just would get my mind off of things.”

With her business up and running now, Timmerman does not have the same amount of time to hand embroider as she used to, but she said that designing and using the machine gives her the same kind of stress relief hand embroidering used to.

BluThreads has had two pop-up shops since the start of the business, and Timmerman will be taking her designs to the second floor of the Landmark on Grand River on Oct. 12 at 10 a.m. for her third.

Since Timmerman designs and creates all of her own pieces, preparing for a pop-up event can lead to a lot of long hours and late nights that can become very frustrating, but Timmerman’s friends and sister have been volunteering to help her out so she can keep doing what she loves to do.

Timmerman’s last pop-up shop was Oct. 1 at Vintage Fest in downtown East Lansing, and at that event, BluThread’s most popular design sold out in just 30 minutes.

“It's honestly a dream come true,” Timmerman said. “Like I can't comprehend that people really enjoy my stuff that much.”