Our family has been sewing, crafting and quilting as long as I can remember. As kids we were taught to embroider, knit, crochet, sew clothing and quilt. It is the joy of learning new things and exploring new creative ideas. I ended up enjoying quilting so much, this is the story of how I came to start a quilt shop.
When I retired, I failed and went back to work, and then I volunteered at the hospital, and then I got a wild idea to start a small quilt store in my home. My first couple of customers were so excited, they stayed four and five hours every single day. I decided this was not going to work for me. What I needed was a storefront, a brick and mortar location.
An opportunity came up for me to get one, and I had inherited some money, so I bought fabric and opened a fabric store. I couldn’t afford the storefront on my own, so two other women and I joined forces and shared the location. A lady from South Africa does machine repairs, alteration, sewing, and stocks yarn and all of the handwork stuff. The other lady was from Goldendale, and had a longarm quilting machine in her family room, so she brought it down, and the three of us started together in the location at 614 Columbus Avenue.
Then the lady with the longarm had to leave the area for health and family reasons, so Willeke, the South African lady and I, now share a space, which makes it culturally interesting to come to my store. She’s very Dutch South African, and I’m a very slightly hippie American.
I don’t keep track of anything and I’m not as attentive to detail. I have a tea table in the back where you can come and sit and visit, and that’s where you’ll find me most of the time. I’ll get up and help you to pick out fabric and visit with you, but you’re also welcome at the tea table to come and have a cookie, a cup of tea, and visit.
And in the last five years, I have met some of the most amazing people, been surprised at what people do, and am totally enjoying retirement, which is a great surprise to me because I didn’t think I would. But this quilt store brings a community of women together that absolutely are the most creative, amazing women I’ve ever met in my entire life.
They pick colors out that I wouldn’t pick out, and make quilts that you just can’t believe how beautiful they are. It’s a small rural community, and the amount of creativity is amazing. We have quilters as young as seven, and as old as about 90. And each one of them, when we get together, brings something to the table to teach everyone.
It’s become a real community of women, for women, committed to being creative, sharing their expertise and their creativity, and they are called, I would say called, like to share the information that we have learned through the ages, or through age, to share with the new crop of quilters, and the new crop of sewers. And in this day and age of AI, the stuff that we create is going to be unique and like nothing else because we have the opportunity to blend the new with the old. The old grandma’s garden, the old log cabin, into a new idea with AI, new colors, new patterns, new fabrics.
So now, when we used to have rules about quilting, we no longer have the rules. You can quilt with cotton thread, you can quilt with polyester, it doesn’t matter if you use rayon or silk or wool, or cotton. It’s just a craft to be creative and to teach the next generation what kind of women we are. We are called, we are committed, and we are creative.