It’s a terribly windy day, and we are searching for Sara King’s stained glass studio out in Lorimor, Iowa. The navigation has taken us to an abandoned one-room schoolhouse that Mallory and I both look at longingly, half-wondering if Des Moines Mercantile needs a second location in Lorimor. We’ve passed many cows, lots of horses, and two very cute herding dogs that I fight the urge to jump out of the car to pet. We take a turn down another gravel road and see a house with a small building behind it. Not quite a garage. Not quite a shed. And, yes, one of the windows is a large stained glass piece. We’ve found the Red Thread Upcycles headquarters.
Roo, a delicate and shy German shepherd greets us before Sara emerges from the studio.
For many years, Sara King worked as a middle school reading teacher, but, as a creative person without a creative outlet, she wasn’t feeling fulfilled.
“I decided to quit teaching and take on part-time work to give me more time to do my art. My husband was super supportive. He was like, ‘We don’t need you to be miserable,’” Sara says.
Since that time she’s worked at a greenhouse. She’s worked at her parents’ art gallery. She’s worked as a legal clerk. In the beginning, Sara started turning men’s shirts into aprons, her passion coming from repurposing old items and making them into something new. She then came into some stained glass from a church renovation and dusted off her old soldering skills she learned from an ex-boyfriend in college. She sold her stained glass ornaments and aprons at her parents’ art gallery.
Red Thread Upcycles was officially born in 2015 when she launched her Etsy shop which still makes up a large portion of her sales, but it would be years before Sara turned her side business into her full-time job and years before she had a dedicated work space.
Sara used to work on top of her washer and dryer, cleaning up the dust from sanding down the glass each time she needed to start a load. Her kitchen table also served as a work station before she eventually turned a one-car garage on their property into her studio space.
It’s been four years since Sara quit her other jobs to take Red Thread Upcycles full-time. While the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020 was an undoubtedly difficult time for everyone, the effect of people focusing their shopping on small, online retailers gave Red Thread the boost it needed for Sara to be able to make her art her full-time job.
“My online sales picked up hugely overnight,” Sara says. “When I was working more than 40 hours a week fulfilling orders, I knew it was time to quit my other job.”
Though Sara and the business have seen a lot of change since the early days, Sara’s passion for using as much found materials in her work as possible remains the same. Much of her glass comes from people in the community who know her and her work.
“People will leave old windows or broken lamps on my doorstep,” Sara says. “Sometimes I’ll get calls from people in town to come collect a window or something. A lot of my glass still comes from that church renovation.”
Even the Red Thread Upcycles tags and business cards are made out of old cereal boxes. Her packaging and shipping materials are also recycled. Sara even uses the metal springs from old mattresses to make her coveted stained glass Christmas tree toppers.
“I love making the tree toppers,” Sara says. “It’s pretty cool to think that something I make could potentially become a family heirloom.”
As we are talking with Sara, she is fielding calls from her three teenage sons, packing a large order of individual cross ornaments for The Red Cross and showing us how to create one of her small pieces, a light bulb ornament, from beginning to end. She draws an outline on the glass from a handmade pattern she drew. She carves the glass and snaps off the edges to pop out her shape. She sands the edges. She lines the edges with copper foil tape and solders and cures the piece. It’s remarkably soothing and satisfying to watch.
When asked if she ever sees herself growing the business, taking on employees or making it into a larger operation, Sara says no. This is it. This is already the big dream. Working on her art full-time, in her own studio close to her family, making every piece herself. This is the dream already.
You can buy Red Thread Upcycles stained glass pieces on Sara’s Etsy shop, at one of her markets or events, or here in the store at Des Moines Mercantile. We just got in a bunch of her beautiful holiday creations that we can't wait to share with you.