On Saturday, Jan. 22, Washington state will observe its first annual Local Quilt Shop Day.
Founded in 2011 by the Vancouver-based Fabric Shop Network, a trade association for independent quilt and fabric shops worldwide, Local Quilt Shop Day celebrates the history and tradition of quilting, and the small businesses that not only provide supplies for this craft but also a place for quilters to gather as a community.
How the day is observed varies from store to store, with some businesses offering special demos or sales, but all the Fabric Shop Network asks is that people show up for their favorite quilt shop, be it in person or online.
"Every shop is its own nexus of a community," Deb Messina, a Local Quilt Shop Day coordinator with the Fabric Shop Network, told the SGN. "So they create projects, demos, sales, whatever that they think would appeal to quilters visiting their shop on Local Quilt Shop Day, things that they think people will have some fun with. It's easy to participate: all you have to do is go to your local quilt shop, whether they're a Fab Shop member or not."
Currently, Local Quilt Shop Day is observed on the fourth Saturday of every year in at least 20 US states and Canadian provinces, including Washington and Oregon. Messina says the Fabric Shop Network is working with other state governments make the day official.
Quilting's special
Quilting is an ancient tradition that has been used to document and pass down history from generation to generation. It is also a diverse practice that has played a prominent role in LGBTQ+ history and activism. For example, the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt is a quilting project memorializing those who died of AIDS. As of 2020 it is the largest piece of community folk art in the world. Currently, the AIDS Memorial Quilt has over 48,000 individual memorial panels and weighs an estimated 54 tons. The quilt is now housed in San Francisco, with some pieces housed in the American Folklife Center and the Library of Congress, both located in Washington, DC. Panels of the quilt can be viewed at https://www.aidsmemorial.org/interactive-aids-quilt
"Quilts have always been political," Messina said. "They've always been utilitarian. But they've also been decorative. They've been celebratory." For Messina, quilters like Ricky Tims (a Colorado musician) and Gee's Bend (a group of African American women in Gee's Bend, Ala.) also highlight the diversity that's found in the quilting world.
Quilting is also an inclusive practice, for which required skills such as sewing and design can be taught to anyone and have been handed down from sewist to sewist for generations.
"I can say that as a shop owner, it's true that statistically the largest share of people who frequent quilt shops or who are addicted to quilting look like me: they're more in my age group, they're female. But I can tell you that I had a significant portion of my customer base that was male, [or] that were immigrants to our area," Messina said.
"As shop owners, our goal is to make everybody feel like they found their creative home."
For those interested in visiting a participating store on the 22nd, Messina and the Fabric Shop Network recommend checking out these in Western Washington: