Benton man finds peace through new career and quilting
After starting out in a nursing career, Chris Beck, a Benton resident, changed gears and joined the staff at Zinck’s Fabric Outlet in Berlin. It was there, Beck said, where “all these dim lights that I had once used when I was younger and more creative started flickering again.”
Chris Beck always wanted to be a nurse, and for 2 1/2 years, he was a good one.
After graduating from Hiland High, Beck got his nursing degree at the University of Akron, then worked at Aultman and became a charge nurse, becoming board certified in administering chemotherapy. With lots of student nurses coming into the department, he loved the opportunity to do hands-on teaching.
“But it was hard,” he said. “I have a hard time separating my emotions and empathy, leaving it behind when I’d go home from work. My mental health got bad, and I began spiraling.”
In the last six months that Beck worked as a nurse, he began to see some of his regular chemo patients pass away. Then the pandemic hit. In addition to taking care of his patients, they were expected to float down to the COVID units.
“They did it safely, but it was concerning,” Beck said. “I didn’t enjoy it. It was stressful. I worried about my chemo patients that hadn’t been in in a while, and it got bad.”
Nick Schrock is the owner of Zinck’s Fabric Outlet in Berlin and a longtime friend of Beck. When Beck was in college, he’d visit him at least once a semester to discuss why he should work for him. At the time he didn’t want to hear it. He was in college, and his course was set. Flash forward to the pandemic, and the burnout was real.
“I called Nick one day and said, ‘Hey, can I have that job?’” Beck said.
It fell at the right time when Schrock was stretched thin, and Beck came on board to help ease the load.
“He brought me in and let me get a feel for the fabrics, and all these dim lights that I had once used when I was younger and more creative started flickering again,” he said. “I was always creating stuff and kind of stepped away from it for quite a while.
“My core creative strengths of color matching, layout and flow came back. People would come into the store telling me they didn’t know what went with what, and I’d go find colors and fabrics that would tie the piece together.”
He moved up and became an assistant manager, working with Schrock’s father in the store.
“As I moved into a leadership position, I didn’t like it when people came in and asked me a question I didn’t know,” Beck said. “I decided I know how to sew, and I’m just going to make a quilt. I wanted to know what they were talking about.”
As Beck stretched his creative muscles, he embarked on what could only be called his quilting clinical. In nursing you train in different areas of medical care called clinicals, and he attacked quilting much like he’d attacked becoming an RN.
Over two to three months, he finished his first quilt, tapping into things he hadn’t used in years. Next, he made a crib quilt for a friend’s newborn as a gift.
Schrock’s dad liked the quilt so much that he had him make one to hang in the store. When finished, he hung it up, and a woman from New Jersey saw it, falling in love with it. She bought the quilt for her coming granddaughter and requisitioned another one for her coming grandson.
“Then she ordered a twin quilt, giving me quite a bit of creative freedom to design it,” he said. “She was over the moon when it was done.”
And Piece of Mind Quilts was born.
Beck now sews on a Bernette sewing machine he purchased locally. He began his sewing journey on a heavy, vintage 1950s White sewing machine for which parts can no longer be found.
Customers now look for Beck as the one to help them with questions they have. A woman came into the store to buy some things, telling him she was on a quilt retreat with friends. They invited him to come to sew with them.
“They came in every day,” Beck said. “They were there for a whole week, and each time they’d invite me to come sew with them. Saturday came around, and they asked me again, and I told them I had to work. But they knew I got off at 3 and told me they had wine and snacks. They didn’t give me an option.”
So he dragged his heavy sewing machine to The Rural Thimble, where they were staying in Charm. His machine was heavy and obnoxious — so loud they couldn’t believe he could sew on it. But he learned much from them.
Several weeks later the lady who had invited him returned. They had gone together to buy him a beginner — but modern — sewing machine and said never to bring back that heavy machine again if he wanted to sew with them. He used this gift to transition into his permanent sewing machine.
Beck has sold 13 quilts in the last year, now able to finish one quilt a month.
He has put together varying quilt designs including a special quilt his dad commissioned for his mom. She knew the pattern and colors, popping in to see the progress, but didn’t know he was making it for her. When he was finishing the quilt, she saw him put the last stitch in, lamenting she would never see it again.
At the same time, he was making a quilt to surprise his dad. He opened the quilt for his mom to show her the finished product, laying it on her lap. Then he went to retrieve the one he made for his dad.
“I told them, ‘Now you both have one,’” he said. “Then I left before the waterworks started.”
Beck is gathering a portfolio of quilts to have under his belt and recently set up social media accounts. There’s a possibility Zinck’s will acquire an automated longarm quilting machine, something Beck has taken a class on, set up in a section of the store.
“This has been the only thing that has ever worked for me,” Beck said. “I called it Piece of Mind Quilts because every day my mind is a million miles an hour. It never stops, and I don’t sleep well, but I found that sitting down at the sewing machine reins me in and levels me out. It’s become my peace of mind.”