Why a shop? And why now?

My thread and fabric stock outgrew our house a while ago, and needed a more organised home so I could get mail orders packed more efficiently, and keep a better handle on stock control - very hard to do when you are doing a show every week or so, loading and unloading the van, and everything getting a bit more disorganised when packing up quickly at the end of an event. While the inside of the van is quite organised, with drawers accessible via the side doors, and baskets on shelves, it isn't easy to keep loading and unloading it, and then trying to sort out orders when it is full and ready to leave for a show. But I didn't have enough space to set it all out in the house. Mail order stuff also took over my workroom, to the point that doing anything other than packing orders in there was impossible.

Then we have had the problem of needing to clear out fabric for some central heating repairs (we've had no central heating for a year now!), and have had to take fabric stock down to my mum's old house for storage, over 200 miles away...

I had thought about some kind of unit, even a storage unit, and then I saw this. Perfect. The ground floor is fully accessible (with accessible loo) and large enough for a compact patchwork and quilting shop, with plenty of wall space for fabric shelves and thread display boards. There's a wide, low rise concrete staircase leading to an office/studio and kitchenette on the upper floor, where I'm thinking about running workshops, starting later in 2025.ALL we need to do is fit it out and get the fabric stock in there!

So I worked flat out for four weeks, so we could open on 7th December 2024.

There's still much to do, more shelving to build, more fabric to bring in, thread displays to make etc. but the shop is now OPEN. Please see side panel for opening dates for the next few months.

See the slideshow below for what we've been gettng up to - click the image to see them at larger size. I'll keep adding photos as we work our way towards the final version of the shop. Once the main room is finished, we need to set up the back hallway with more fabric and kits.