Marigold Quilt Shop joins businesses on GC’s main drag
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MARIFOLD Quilt Shop owner, Karen Myers, stands in front of her BENINA Q24 long arm quilting machine. —photo by Missy Klatt
By Missy Klatt
The Marigold Quilt Shop owned by Karen Myers is the latest business to lay down roots on Oak St. in Glenwood City. Karen is actually the mom of Jason Fleming who owns the insurance agency in the same building.
One day not too long ago, Jason said “Mom do you still have that dream?” to which Karen replied “What dream is that?” “Well if you don’t know what the dream is you must not have it anymore.” “Are you talking about the dream to open a quilt shop? And he said yeah. I said yeah and he said you can rent the other side from me.” So begins the story of Karen fulfilling her lifelong dream to open a quilt shop.
Karen has been a nurse all her life at Mayo Clinic Health Systems in Eau Claire as well as a part time realtor for Coldwell Banker since 2002. And with her Grand Opening occurring later this week (May 13-14), she can add shop owner to her list of occupations.
Construction and remodeling started in November of 2021. She said that people that have stopped by during the process have all been really encouraging and very friendly and happy that the quilt store was coming to Glenwood. While she was hoping to be open earlier, with all the delays in building materials and work shortages not to mention that all the fabric orders were three months behind, it is what it is and the dream just took a little longer to become a reality.
Karen is originally from Eau Claire but now lives outside of Colfax with her husband, Scott. They also own Myers Septic in Elk Mound. Karen who has been a longarmer, that is someone who stitches the fancy designs on top of the quilts, had been considering opening a long arming business out of her home but then things fell in place for her to open her own shop.
Karen wanted to be in a small town with a store front. At this point she is not offering any services or selling any products on line but in the future that may be a possibility. Besides a full line of quilting products Karen will also be offering classes.
The first class, for a small group, that she will be offering is an apron class, then a pillowcase class. She is hoping this will give her a chance to meet more people. She’s chosen some easy patterns that can be completed or nearly completed in just one class.
Marigold Quilt shop is a full service quilt shop offering fabric with Moda as the largest fabric line, batting, notions, Jelly Rolls, patterns, kits and BERNINA sewing machines. She is also offering the longarm quilting service using a BERNINA Q24 which is state of the art allowing hundreds of designs and sizes to be quilted. It’s also one of the largest allowing her to easily do king size quilts.
Karen currently has about 250 bolts of fabric with another 200 on order. She is also happy to do special orders if someone sees something that is going to be released. She also does custom quilting but currently is not doing binding. She states that most people like to do their binding by hand which is a bit time consuming but she also points out that BERNINA machines have a binding attachment that works really slick if people don’t like to hand bind.
Being a dealer for Bernina will allow those with Bernina machines to drop their sewing machine off in Glenwood for servicing or repairs. Karen has partnered with Brubakers out of Owen-Withee for this service. Another reason that drew Karen to Glenwood was the fact that nobody in the area sold sewing machines. Karen has been amazed at the amount of women in the area that sew or quilt. She said that many of the Quilting Guilds have already stopped by to check out the shop.
When asked where the name Marigold came from, Karen stated that she had been writing down a lot of different names and some with flowers because she likes flowers and then all of a sudden it came to her, Marigold, which is named after her sister Margo. When the nieces and nephews were younger they couldn’t quite say Margo so Margo became Marigold.
For her grand opening on May 14 and 15, Karen will be offering 20% off all fabrics and different promotions for BERNINA as well as door prizes and refreshments
Besides Jason, Karen is also mom to Melissa and Angela and grandmom to five grand kids. “They’re so much fun” she enthuses about her grandkids.
