FRANKLIN – In a way, Carla Jo Hale’s hobby is destroying things and putting them back together differently.

In a room behind the main section of Froggy’s Quilts & Simple Treasures in downtown Franklin, Hale and Linda Dohm taught a class Thursday on how to make a quilt.

The process involved cutting sections of cotton fabric into strips. In subsequent classes, all strips of the same color will be stacked and sewn together into thicker lengths of cotton.

Those will then be cut into smaller strips and arranged into a pattern resembling a series of diamond-shaped rings, each ring surrounded by a slightly larger one.

“My husband says, ‘Why do you take this perfectly good fabric and cut them into tiny pieces?’ ” Dohm said.

“Because it’s relaxing to destroy things,” Hale joked.

Hale, who co-owns the store with her husband, Steve, said she took up quilting 18 years ago because she needed a hobby.

“I’ve always done crafts, so this was the next step,” she said, adding that she also has plenty of experience with cross-stitching, ceramics and knitting.

The Hales started Froggy’s in 2016 because they wanted something to do after retirement, she said.

“I’m retired and Steve’s retired and a disabled veteran and we got bored with retirement so we opened up a shop,” she said.

At Froggy’s, Hale and Dohm regularly teach quilting classes, which, according to Dohm, see different turnout levels depending on what sort of quilting is being taught.

“It’s always different,” she said. “It just depends on what we’re doing and who wants to do it.”

Dohm, who owns The Steel Thimble and is an instructor at Froggy’s, took up quilting about a decade ago because she needed something to do.

In 2006, shortly after her retirement, she asked a friend what she might do to fill her time, Dohm said.

“I called her and told her I was bored,” she said.

Dohm has since become a skilled quilter, specializing in quilting with a long-arm sewing machine, and opening the Steel Thimble, her own commission quilting business.

Dohm said Thursday’s class was the first in a series of three that should end with all participants having the top layer of a quilt completed.

“Today is basically a bunch of cutting,” she said before guiding the circular blade of her rotary cutter through a layer of fabric with the help of a straight-edged measuring tool.

The class does not cover attaching a bottom layer – which doesn’t have to be cut up and sewn back together like the top layer – or batting, the thick cotton enclosed between the two layers.

Two people who had never before attended one of Froggy’s quilting classes came to Thursday’s lesson. Margie Radich, who moved to the area last year from Oak Grove, Calif., said this was her first class at Froggy’s, but not her first quilting class overall.

Radich said she took up quilting three or four years ago. She and a friend began taking quilting classes after the friend suggested that Radich needed to find something to do.

“She told me I needed a hobby, so we started going to quilting classes,” she said.

Radich was drawn to quilting because her mother was a quilting hobbyist, she said.

“My mother quilted and I just think that homemade quilts are beautiful,” she said. “Each one is unique.”

Having dealt with a move from California and the deaths of a few relatives in the last year, Radich hasn’t had much time to devote to quilting.

Recently, though, she started looking for a quilting shop, hoping it could facilitate a return to her hobby.

Ultimately, she found Froggy’s.

“I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things,” she said.

– Follow reporter Jackson French on Twitter @Jackson_French or visit bgdailynews.com.