Fabric and Friendship
Inside Palo Cedro’s Blue Iris Quilt Shoppe…t’s Wednesday morning at Blue Iris Quilt Shoppe in Palo Cedro. The ladies have returned to Open Sew, to stitch and chat and enjoy each other’s company. Most carry decades of quilting experience, while beginners drop in to learn the venerable craft of threading together fabrics to create clothing, blankets or wherever their muses take them, piece by piece.
Shop proprietor Kimber Rickey says quilters are actually called piecers. “You’re making the quilt top with all the little pieces, you know, blocks and squares and triangles or whatever you’re doing,” she describes. “And then you have to add batting and the backing and stitch that all together to make a cohesive quilt.”
In addition to open sew, any group can meet for their projects here. The shop also hosts retreats that can run for days, for up to 20 people. “It is definitely a regular community stop for those who are in the quilting realm,” Rickey says, “Whether it be crochet, knit, piecing, wool work, anything of that nature is going to fit in.”
And that’s just the classroom. This quilt shop offers quite a bit more.
In a space adjacent in the back of the store stands an impressive sewing machine, and beside it, her hands smoothing the way for an industrial-sized sewing needle, stands an equally impressive young woman, Rickey’s daughter Corinne. She is working to keep an exquisite quilt top flat on a 12-foot table for the computer-driven sewing needle, the moves of which precisely follow swirls of the original design.
Corinne says that although she’s lived among quilters her whole life, quilting didn’t interest her; she much preferred an athletic life. But while in college, after working at her mother’s store for a couple of months, she was bitten by what she calls the quilt flu bug. “Because I was just around all this fabric all this time, and I would think I wish I could do that,” she explains. “And it started to infect my brain with this creativity that I had never experienced before.”
The elder Rickey says she too didn’t care much for quilting, at first. Both her mother and her mother’s sister, Janice, quilted avidly, which mystified the girl. “It never made sense to me,” she says. “Why would they take this beautiful fabric and cut it into little pieces to put back together, and then if they didn’t put it back together right, they had to unstitch it and try again?”
Kimber is third-generation Redding. Her grandfather helped build Shasta Dam. But it was she who built Blue Iris Quilt Shoppe, which is also impressive. The spectacle that takes you as you walk in the door makes you stop and stare, whether you live to quilt or have never running-stitched in your life. All around you stand shelves and shelves and shelves filled with bolts of fabric of every pattern and color imaginable. Finished works deck the walls, and proprietor Rickey can tell you every step it takes to make any of them.
When she bought the Blue Iris Quilt Shop, Rickey changed the name to Shoppe to reflect the boutique ambiance she instilled here.
There’s another member of the family in the store today, Aunt Janice Phelps. Back in the day, Phelps was a serious pianist. She remembers Kimber and her two siblings visiting to hear her play. “I was learning concertos and the bumble boogie and the kids liked that,” recalls Phelps. “It did influence her. She was a young child when she took piano lessons.”
For that young girl, music became life. A skilled pianist by fifth grade, she added trumpet, which she loved playing in the school band. “I played it all through fifth to 12th grade, and then after graduation, I continued with a community band I had started in junior high. So I was used to organizing and being part of the team enjoying music,” she says. “But when I had children at home, music was more quiet. On my piano, I’d be able to process my emotions or things going on in my head.”
She graduated from Shasta College with a degree in business and human relations.
Rickey says the sudden loss of a job took her into quilting. Music wasn’t going to work for dealing with these feelings, and she knew exactly what to do. “I needed to build something to process the emotions, the turmoil, and I picked quilting as another expression outlet,” she recalls. “The music disappears when you stop playing, but a quilt gives you more evidence of your existence, something you can hold on to.”
She lost herself in her new expression outlet. “I picked up the quilting bug almost instantly. I took my first vacation in eight years and hand-tied a quilt,” she says. “And I fell in love, absolutely in love.”
Corinne’s quilt flu bug also hit hard, keeping her up late at night stitching, despite college classes looming the next day. “I was spending all my free time, and basically it was a warning,” she says. “I did get a little burned out doing it too quickly, but now it’s more calm of a pace.”
When she’s not working at her mother’s shop, she studies business and administration at Shasta College.
Through her love of quilting, Corinne found another love, that for the seasoned seamstresses of Open Sew. “I’m basically an adopted grandchild through all of the regulars here,” she says. “And it’s amazing because any of these ladies, I feel like I could call and contact and I could count on them. So it was literally like walking into a new big family.” One of those regulars announces proudly that their young quilter begins teaching classes here next month.
Today, Corinne Rickey is hoping one day she can buy Blue Iris Quilt Shoppe from her mother. •
Blue Iris Quilt Shoppe
9348 Deschutes Road, Palo Cedro
(530) 547-2228
Hours: Monday through Saturday,
9 am – 4 pm; closed Sundays and most major holidays
www.blueirisquiltshoppe.com
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