New Quilt Shop Fills Fabric Gap in Plymouth
When Joann Fabrics in Plymouth closed its doors, it was time for another door to open, thought Mary Jo Finley, owner of the new Color Wheel Quilt Shop at 200 N. Michigan St. in Plymouth. “Plymouth has needed a quilt shop for a long time,” Finley acknowledges, “and the time was now.”
Finley emphasizes the importance of being able to shop for fabric in person.
“Sewists who buy fabric want to feel the quality, see the scale of the design, see how tight or loose the weave is, and most importantly see the color,” she says. “On a computer or phone screen, the color might appear very differently in person from what you thought you were getting.”
Another factor Finley attributes to the Color Wheel Quilt Shop’s success is its location.
“We’re in the middle of a fabric desert,” she adds.
According to Finley, the closest fabric or quilt shops where one can get fine-quality quilting cottons like the ones she carries are 25 miles north, 35 miles south, 27 miles east and 52 miles west.
Color Wheel Quilt Shop’s slogan is: “Fabric you desire and service you deserve™.”
“When we meet with fabric manufacturers’ representatives and are deciding what fabrics we will carry, we don’t think, ‘What fabric will sell?’ We think, ‘What fabrics do our customers desire?’ Our mission in everything we do is to provide customers with the fabric they desire and to do it with the service they think they deserve,” Finley says. “When you come to the Color Wheel Quilt Shop, we want you to feel valued and special, because to us, you are special. We are honored that you have come into our shop.”
Finley speaks proudly of her staff of five employees, describing them as very capable and experienced, working very hard to make sure that when customers leave the shop, they feel like they have been helped as much as possible. Eager to help customers bring their quilt dreams into reality are Catina King, creative manager, Angie Beyler, business manager, Tammi Green, embroidery manager, Phyllis Pier, fabric manager, and Darlene Derifield, sewing manager.
King plays a major role in selecting fabric, notions and patterns for the store and teaches classes on how to make bags, how to free-motion quilt and others, all while helping quilters and sewists tap into their inner creativity.
Beyler assists the shop with anything to do with the computer and general business operations. Green helps customers select which embroidery machine will suit them best and then teaches buyers how to use their embroidery machine.
“Our machines arrive in boxes, but we unpack them so that you have the opportunity to try before you buy,” Finley says.
Pier is in charge of displaying the fabric and making sure there is at least one fat quarter of every bolt of fabric in the shop, and assembles kits of cut and selected fabric that make it easier for customers to start a project. Derifield makes sure quilt top samples are on display and works with Pier to assemble kits to make it easier to achieve similar results. She also teaches beginning sewing and how to use a serger.
In addition to teaching appliqué and beginning quilting, Finley also cleans and services sewing machines, pointing out that “a good cleaning can make a world of difference in how your machine sews.”
Some of the fabric lines that Color Wheel Quilt Shop carries include Free Spirit (Tula Pink, Kaffe Fassett, Anna Maria Horner), Moda, Tilda, Liberty of London, Riley Blake Designs, QT Fabrics, Northcott, P&B, Andover, Hoffman, FIGO, In the Beginning, Timeless Treasures, Michael Miller, Allison Glass, Henry Glass, Studio E, Blank, AE Nathan, Windham, Anthology and more.
“Moda makes a Grunge blender that is very popular with quilters. We are receiving approximately 48 bolts of Grunge a month until we have all 241 colors. By the end of March, we should have them all,” Finley says.
The shop has done the same thing, creating a collection with white and cream tone-on-tones, batiks and Free Spirit solids.
In addition to fabric and notions, Color Wheel Quilt Shop is an authorized dealer for Italian-designed Necchi sewing, serger and embroidery machines. Necchi sells 12 models in the United States, and Color Wheel Quilt Shop carries all of them.
The Color Wheel Quilt Shop’s line of Necchi machines has been received very positively by customers. Tammi Green, shop embroidery manager, who has considerable machine embroidery expertise, evaluated the Necchi embroidery machines with high remarks, and she has produced beautiful results with the Necchi machines.
Finley shared a bit of local Necchi trivia. Quilter Tom Treat recently visited the Color Wheel Quilt Shop. (His parents, Budd and Ajean Treat, founded the well-known Treat’s menswear store in downtown Plymouth.) Tom told Finley that in 1953, when his dad was in the Navy, stationed in the Mediterranean, he bought a Necchi sewing machine in Italy and carried it back to the United States as a gift for his wife. The machine was used for many years to alter and tailor in their shop.
A block south of Treat’s on Michigan Street, Finley named her store the Color Wheel Quilt Shop because of the influence the color wheel has had on her quilting.
“When you purchase fabric for a quilt, it’s a big investment, and you want to be confident that it will look good when it is finished,” she says. “Using the color wheel is a good way to achieve that goal.”
At the core of the shop’s name Color Wheel Quilt Shop, Finley’s began using a color wheel 30 years ago, when she collected discarded scraps of fabric and eventually organized them into small color-coordinating bags. The shop sells color wheels just like the one Finley first used.
“Color wheels are game changers,” she says.
When Finley decided to make appliqué quilts for her granddaughters, she needed 50-weight cotton thread in a bunch of different colors. With a local store carrying this type of thread no longer open, Finley began to search for the needed thread.
“With appliqué, the thread shows and needs to match the fabric as closely as possible in order for the quilt to look nice,” she says.
She traveled to five quilt shops in two states without success in finding the needed thread. Finley committed to making sure the Color Wheel Quilt Shop would solve this need, and it does, carrying 80 colors of 50-weight cotton.
Finley also offers quilter activities at the shop. One such upcoming event is the Super Bowl Bed Turning, noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 8. A bed turning is a community-focused event rooted in history, when women gathered to hear about a woman’s collection of quilts. Quilters can register to participate in the February event to view and listen as Finley talks about a stack of quilts she, along with her grandmother Aunt Tony (not an aunt, and her name is not Tony) and others made.
Registration is $50 in advance and includes fabric the participant may select after registering. Quilters may bring their own sewing machine from home, use one of the Color Wheel Quilt Shop’s Italian-designed floor models. Super Bowl refreshments will be included.
Capacity is limited, so if interested, stop by Color Wheel Quilt Shop to register soon. Finley hopes others have quilt collections they would like to bring in and describe so that Color Wheel Quilt Shop bed turnings might become a monthly event.
Color Wheel Quilt Shop is located at 200 N. Michigan St. in Plymouth. Quilters can see the thread display and everything else the shop has to offer from 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
