For the city’s quilters, a haven catches on in Chelsea

Quilting student Andrea Rosen checks out her fabric options at The City Quilter recently.

By Marsha Lebedev Bernstein

Janet Winning understands her addiction. It’s something that just is. “Some people smoke. Some people drink. Others quilt,” explained the Byron, Minn., resident, placing fabric and sewing in the unanticipated company of Winstons and Johnny Walker. Winning was visiting New York City with her teenage son and friend, Laurie Cook (“We met in a quilter’s group,” she pointed out). While Winning’s son scoped Chelsea for electronics, the two women scanned more than 2,000 bolts of fabrics at The City Quilter, a quilting and fabric shop on West 25th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues.

Among the dizzying array of fabrics—from traditional Japanese floral patterns to kitschy pin-up girls in pastel swimsuits set against a backdrop of hearts—one particular pattern caught Winning’s eye. Seconds later, she was opening her wallet. Her selection? A black-and-white cotton fabric featuring illustrations of some of the City’s top tourist attractions, including the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty. The midwestern mom had hoped she would find “[fabrics with illustrations of the New York City cityscape] to make a souvenir wall hanging.” It was no accident that she wound up at The City Quilter to satisfy her fix. To those in the know in the quilting and fabric worlds, The City Quilter is destination shopping.

Chelsea residents and married couple Dale Riehl and Cathy Izzo founded the shop in 1997. Since that time, The City Quilter has quickly gained a local and national presence. Quilt Sampler magazine selected the store for its 2007 Best of Quilt Sampler issue (20 national quilting shops were chosen out of the 150 shops featured in the magazine since its inception in 1995). This was not news to Joan Smith, a Lexington, Ma., grandmother and quilter. “[City Quilter] is considered one of the best in the United States…in the world,” she offered. Smith’s monthly visits to New York are dual-purposed: She gets to see her 5-month-old grandson and indulge herself in one of the many classes offered at The City Quilter. “Then it’s back on the Acela,” she said, referring to the high-speed Amtrak train that would take her back home.

City Quilter student Bernice Haber presents her design wall of Dear Jane blocks to the rest of the class.

And for those not plugged into the quilting world, the people at Zagat Survey—the name in consumer survey guides to restaurants, hotels, resorts and shopping destinations across the country—are bringing people looking for high-quality fabrics and related items to The City Quilter’s door. In 2006, the Zagat Survey’s New York City Shopping Guide listed the Chelsea shop as the best “Fabrics/Notions” store in the quality category (and gave the store a 26 out of 30 for service).

While “City Quilter” may sound like an oxymoron—quilting, for many, conjures images of an octogenarian quilting quaintly in her rocker—Riehl and Izzo are quick to point out the urban nature of their products and clientele. While traditional quilting is known for its quaint patterns and muted tones, the Chelsea store opts for bolder colors and more contemporary imagery. “We have a distinct look…we don’t really do traditional very much. We’re much brighter,” explained Izzo. As for their customers and students, Riehl said they are “representative of New York City. Along with secretaries, retirees and students, we have investment bankers, lawyers, judges and art directors.”

The Zagat honor seemed particularly satisfying to Riehl. “The [fabric shop] in Chelsea beats out the fabric places in the Garment District!” Riehl proudly pointed out. But he described the core of City Quilter as “making beautiful things with fabric [and this is reflected] both in the classroom and the products offered.” In other words, don’t be fooled by the words adorning the bright red awning outside the 133 West 25th Street storefront—it’s not just about quilts. In addition to classes such as hand and machine quilting and sewing, the downtown fabric mecca offers classes in making handbags, dolls and fabric-covered boxes, as well as books and supplies to get people started in any of these areas and keep them going…and going.

These long-lasting love affairs with quilting seem to always begin with a coup de foudre, as the French might say. The term’s literal translation is “a stroke of lightning,” but in French parlance it is used to mean love at first sight. In the case of quilting, it’s clearly love at first stitch. Winning wasn’t the only one to be seduced by a yard of fabric, a needle and some thread.

Pamela Wexler, a former actress, was first introduced to quilting when she saw some quilting patterns in a book her husband used for needlepoint. An actors’ strike left her with time on her hands, “so I thought I’d quilt,” she said. “I thought I’d burn out, but that didn’t happen.” Wexler has been quilting ever since (and by hand, not machine)—and quilts every day.

For stay-at-home mom Stacey Conroy, it was fabric that pulled her in to quilting. As the mother of a 5-year-old in school, Conroy was “bored at home” and after reading about The City Quilter in a magazine and reading some books “where [the characters] were quilting,” her interest was piqued. She took her first introduction-to-quilting class two years ago. “I’ve become a fabric person,” she confessed. “I keep buying. You can never have too much fabric.”

Impending retirement can also spur the desire to engross oneself in a new activity. Lois Sautter chose quilting as her passion right before she retired in 1997. “I always liked quilts, liked seeing them in museums.” That same year, just as other fabric stores in the city were closing, The City Quilter opened its doors. She was thrilled to have a new place to shop and take classes.
The cult-like devotion to the craft is perhaps most apparent in the world of Dear Jane quilting, an elaborate and very particular style of pattern-making and quilting that originated with one woman’s mid-19-century quilted creation. “The people who are [into the Dear Jane style of quilting] tend to be more hardcore because of the intricate nature of the work. [It involves making] around 225 [individual] blocks [that are then sewn together to form one quilt],” said Izzo.

Dear Jane instructor and Ohio native Judy Rode Schneck has been teaching quilting since 1980 and at The City Quilter since it opened at its original location on 24th Street in Chelsea, although she started teaching Dear Jane in 1999. (Riehl said he and Izzo moved to their current location because they outgrew their former space. “It was approximately one-third the size [of what we have here].”) Schneck’s quilting roots date back to the 1970s when she “started doing patchwork in high school” at a time she referred to as “the beginning of the quilting revival.”

Schneck minced no words when she welcomed Smith and Conroy, two Dear Jane newbies, to her class on a recent Wednesday afternoon. “You two are joining a worldwide cult, a singularly special cult within the world of quilting.” Smith and Conroy, sharing a two-person table in the front row, seemed excited about their Dear Jane initiation. Conroy, the self-professed “fabric person,” had her yards of patterned and solid pastel cotton fabric in a neat pile by her elbow. Smith had her palette chosen as well. “I love red, but it can’t all be red, so I’ll do red, white and pink,” she said, holding a white fabric with miniature red hearts.

But just who is this “Jane” anyway? Schneck enlightened her students, new and old. She explained that Jane is “Jane Stickle, who was from Vermont and made her quilt in 1863.” Schneck continued with more details about the quilting pioneer. “We know nothing about whether she made it by herself. A lot of the designs [of the individual blocks] are her own. She signed [the quilt] “In War Time 1863.” So what do Janiacs, as Dear Jane enthusiasts are commonly called, find so appealing about this involved form of quilting?

Marge Engber, who has been “seriously quilting” for the last two years, said it was “something about the challenge of doing the small blocks and the techniques [involved]…and you can do a small block in one sitting.”

For Wexler, “it’s like a game. What do we do next? What shape will it take?” she said with a childlike curiosity. While the former actress is a quilting veteran, she only began Dear Jane quilting approximately four years ago. A speaker at Wexler’s quilting guild unknowingly lured the former actress into the world of Dear Jane when she described its devotees as “obsessed.” “I thought, That’s what I want. I want obsession!” exclaimed Wexler.

Others, like Julia Lloyd, find the mathematical aspects of the format appealing. “I love puzzles and figuring out how to do things. Every block can be done different ways,” she began. “I don’t love working on the same pattern, but with Dear Jane, I have hundreds of blocks [to design and create].” For Lloyd, quilting serves as the perfect balance to her graduate studies in English. “It’s a way to get out of the cerebral world and do something tactile.”

Most Janiacs know not only exactly what draws them to this almost one-and-a-half-century-old way of quilting, but what they want to do with their finished products as well. Engber is working on “two baby quilts for upcoming grandchildren in July.” Lloyd is putting together a table runner for her parents—“for a table my father designed”—using colors and patterns evocative of Japan, where her parents lived some time ago. Bernice Haber, for whom quilting is an emotional and mental break (“My husband isn’t so well,” she said), plans to gift her quilt to her daughter. Haber’s daughter told her the quilt’s browns, tans and golds “were right for her bedroom.”

Julie Balzer, on the other hand, is enjoying not having a prospective home for her quilt. The young and talented artist—her quilt, entitled “The Sum is Greater than the Parts,” recently won “Most Innovative” and “Viewer’s Choice: Third Place” in the 2007 Empire Quilters Show—has just discovered creating something for the sake of creating. “It’s been a journey for me as an artist [because now] I don’t feel like things have to be useful. [I don’t have to answer the question] where will it go? It’s pretty, and that’s it.”

But with all this sewing, does anyone ever take a break? Sautter said an eye condition has put her “on sabbatical” from quilting, although she continues to attend classes to stay in the loop. Not just any classes, however, as she is particularly fond of the teachers at The City Quilter. In the City Quilter classroom, she said, “you don’t have to do something a certain way. There are many ways of achieving the same end result. The teachers emphasize the importance of enjoying yourself, not being perfect, finishing things and moving on.”

Those are surely good quilting tips, but perhaps even better life lessons.