A thread, a needle and a little imagination is all Maria Kountz needs to create a one-of-a-kind piece that her customers will love. As lead seamstress and designer at Tactical Tailor in Lakewood, you'll find Kountz elbow-deep in fabric.

"It was somewhere around seven or eight years old that I snuck a bed sheet from the closet and a needle and thread from my mother's sewing table to make myself a proper princess skirt for reading fairy tales in," she said.

It wasn't until her late teens that she discovered a love of sewing. With a steady hand, and a lot of trial and error, Kountz focused on custom women's formal gowns and wedding dresses.

"Thirty years of mistakes," as she put it, is where she received her training.

She even tells of the first time she had a client ask her to shorten the sleeves on his suit jacket. She asked to keep it for a couple of weeks so she could practice on cheap blazers purchased from a thrift store so she wouldn't ruin his suit.

Kountz's work with military gear began when she married her husband, who is on active-duty at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

"There's such a demand for the work at Tactical Tailor," she said. "We're one of the only companies in the country offering completely custom-built individual patterns and fabric cut completely by hand."

Tactical Tailor manufactures items for use by the military, law enforcement and other government agencies; every piece is sewn in Pierce County.

Gretl Kummerspeck is not just a customer of Kountz's, but also her friend from when they were stationed together at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.

"I believe Maria could literally make anything," Kummerspeck said. "I've seen her make much more than the usual armor plate carriers or ruck sacks. She's made custom-fit harnesses so K-9s can jump out of helicopters attached to their handlers, foam-lined sensitive item cases that are big enough she could fit inside, crazy soldier-specific chest rigs, concealed carry backpacks that you would never guess are holding an M4, or even just a simple belt clip phone case out of the military specific fabric. And she does this for people all over the world."

While most sewing shops use computers to lay out their designs, Kountz uses a different approach: all of her patterns are drawn by hand.

"She takes some measurements, rolls out the fabric, and starts drawing right on the flat material. Who does that anymore? Nobody," Kummerspeck claimed.

Kountz ventured into entrepreneurship by opening her own sew shop, Odds and Hems, during her cancer treatment. An ovarian cancer survivor, she focused her attention on her business, offering tailoring and alterations on every fabric, from silk and spandex to lace and leather, and she specializes in wedding dresses and evening gowns.

"I needed to have a flexible schedule," she said. "Sewing was something I could put down, then come back to it when I felt better. I could sketch designs during chemo infusions. I didn't have to go anywhere."

She also has vast experience working with amputation, colostomy, feeding tube, and prostheses alterations for convenience and comfort.

It's the challenge of design that Kountz most enjoys.

"Every item is a puzzle," she said. "You take nothing more than an idea and have to figure out how to take something one-dimensional to three-dimensional."

She truly works "twenty-six hours a day, eight days a week," she said. "If I'm not daydreaming evening gown designs, then I'm thinking about how I'm going to get a Tactical Tailor order sewn together more efficiently. It's really non-stop."

Kountz has some words of encouragement to other military wife entrepreneurs.

"You will fail at some or all aspects of business in the beginning, and you'll be amazed at how much you don't know. But you have to keep at it. Try a different approach; step out of your comfort zone. And be prepared to squeeze twenty-six hours out of every day."

For now, she is enjoying the privilege of earning an income from something she loves and using a skill she can take anywhere.

"My husband will retire from the Army in about five years, and the thought of traveling around, living out of an RV for a while is quite tempting," she said.

To order a custom item, head on over to Tactical Tailor in Lakewood.