BY CAMI KOONS
Christina DeArmond was told her business would “never make it in a small town” like Eudora, Kansas.
After opening Quilting Bits & Pieces in 1997, DeArmond said several fabric representatives wouldn’t bother to come by to do business with her.
More than 20 years later, her store at 736 Main St. attracts customers from all over Kansas and the country and is celebrating yet another National Quilting Day today.
A 2017 Quilting in America study estimates there are nearly 10 million quilters in the United States and consumer spending on quilting is nearly $3.7 billion.
Quilting continues to thrive in popularity because customers want to do what their grandmothers did and keep the history of quilting alive, DeArmond said.
“I think quilting is here to stay,” she said.
DeArmond lived for several years in Minnesota, where she started quilting. Her sister, Amy Deay, told her that she needed to open a quilt shop when she returned to Kansas.
DeArmond never believed it, and yet the shop opened several months after she moved back.
Customer service keeps people faithful to the store, even if they have to drive, DeArmond said. She often helps customers with the math of their projects and will scale their picture to size and help estimate the amount of fabric they will need.
“People know that we will help them pick out any project,” DeArmond said. “Most quilt shops don’t take time to help them pick out the fabrics and amounts.”
DeArmond said the shop invented an embroidery stitch called twilling, and many people have come just to learn the stitch. According to DeArmond, their shop is unique for the amount of hand stitching they do and for their variety of colored threads in stock.
Since its opening, the shop has expanded to teach quilting and embroidery classes, fulfill online orders and host quilting events.
Virginia Biggs of Lenexa brought her sister-in-law, Dolores Weber, from Wichita to the store because she was looking for embroidery projects. Biggs said she’s visited Quilting Bits & Pieces for over 10 years and thinks the store is important to the area.
“There are a lot of quilters, and this store has a lot of variety,” Biggs said.
DeArmond writes a weekly newsletter and manages the store’s social media accounts, but said most customers find the store through word of mouth. DeArmond said most of the regulars are from surrounding towns in Kansas, but they have some customers from Arizona and Colorado who keep coming back.
“Once you find a shop you like, most quilters are willing to travel to get there,” DeArmond said.
For quilters who don’t want to take on a full quilt, the store offers block-of-the-month kits. After a year of completing these monthly blocks, customers will have a finished quilt. DeArmond said these kits are very popular both in store and online.
“We mail them to states from the East Coast to the West Coast and in between,” DeArmond said.
They expanded the shop about eight years ago to include a large classroom space. She said the classes bring in a lot of people from surrounding areas. The classroom also allows the shop to host events like shop hops, overnight quilting retreats and bus tours.
DeArmond said these events are stressful to plan but worth it when she hears the group’s laughter and enjoyment before they even enter the store.
Kaye Spitzli, a partner of the store, said she loves quilting because of how calming and peaceful it can be. She said customers enjoy coming in to stitch for a couple of hours and just chat.
“I think, in our hustle bustle world, it’s just nice to kind of pull back and have a day that you sit and stitch,” Spitzli said.