About Us

Over two millenia ago Plato is credited with saying, “necessity is the mother of invention.” Stan and Dee Dee Townzen, the owners of S&D Stitches, Inc., proved that proverb to be true in 1999.

Stan is a design engineer and has been designing, programming and building computer controlled machines for more than 25 years. Dee Dee is a longarm quilter. She purchased her A-1 923 in the spring of 1999. That summer she quilted a snowball quilt with a snowflake motif in each block. Stan commented on how good it looked and she replied “I'm glad you like it, but I won't make another one. I took out more stitches than I put in.” So, Stan decided to computerize her machine. After a lot of research and some design changes, he had a system up and running by fall, using a commercially available interface program. However, they encountered a problem. Stan could run it, but Dee Dee could run it only if Stan set it up. This was not always feasible, so Stan decided to write the interface program from scratch.

In the spring of 2000, Stan had basically created what is now known as CompuQuilter. He mentioned the system to Stewart Plank, owner of A-1 Quilting Machines, who then asked to see it. Stewart was impressed by how simple it was and how easy it was to operate. So in the spring of 2001, they built one for him. Stan and Dee Dee have been working on debugging, adding enhancements and fine tuning the program ever since.

Later Stewart said what they really needed was a good stitch regulator for those who wanted good stitch quality but weren’t ready to use a full blown computerized system. Stan then designed and built the Stitch Regulators.

Dee Dee has used it daily in her quilting business and they believe they have a very simple but powerful system.