City Sewing Room

Slowing down the pace while vacationing in St. Louis

T and I spent this past few days in St. Louis. For one of those days he had a ticket to the PGA Championships and I had about 9 hours to myself. My first stop was to hike at the Powder Nature Center. This area was all forested and even though the high temp for the day reached almost 90 degrees, it was quite nice on the shaded paths. After traversing 4 miles of trails I headed back to the hotel for a quick shower and then drove to Jackman's Fabrics arriving soon after they opened. The store had a huge collection of quilting fabrics, sewing and quilting machines sales and repair, sewing notions, books, patterns, and a smaller but adequate selection of fashion fabrics. I was looking for fabric from the Kaffe Fasset collection to use as binding for the pinwheel quilt that I was hand quilting. Jackman's had several fabrics in this collection to choose from and I ended up buying two fat quarters for binding. Then I perused the fashion fabric section and found some white knit for t-shirts that was not transparent and black and gray cotton/linen combo for a dress.
After lunch I decided to check out the City Sewing Room. I found this place when I searched "sewing St. Louis," and the concept of sewing space rental, sewing lessons, custom work, etc. sounded promising. I had no trouble finding the place and when I stepped into the building, I immediately felt at home. Anne, the owner, has created such as welcoming retreat for sewing in this space. There seems to be every sort of tool, machine, notion, pattern, and fabric available to anyone who wants to sew on about any project. Anne introduced herself and told me a bit about the place. I told her what I was hoping to use the space for that afternoon and she got me working in no time. There were a couple other women who were already in the studio or who came in throughout the afternoon. One lady runs her sewing business out of a corner space, another was refashioning thrifted shirts, and a third was cutting out fabric for duffle bags. Her sewing guild was planning to make bags for children who have to move around a lot and do not have luggage other than perhaps a garbage bag. There was plenty of room for all of these projects to be occurring at the same time.
Anne also gave me a tour of the building and I continued to be impressed with the use of space.  There were several cutting tables of varying heights (loved having an extra tall one for me), sewing machines both domestic and industrial, sergers, a notions area, an ironing table, dressing area with mirrors, dress forms in various sizes, many in progress projects, and a wall of fabrics.

Work tables

Wall of notions on the left, fabric shelves on far wall, sewing machines in the middle

Books on technique

Sewing supplies in spades

Washer and dryers across from the fabric wall

Wall of fabric

View from front to back

Anne said that many of the supplies were donated and there was quite a range of items so I think you could find about anything you needed for any project. I arrived with only my basted quilt and the fabric I had bought for binding and I soon found a cutting table, rotary cutter, ruler, iron, sewing machine, thread, and scissors at my fingertips. It did not take long to cut my quarter yard into strips and then sew the strips together for binding. I had never put the binding on a quilt before the actual quilting was done before, but I knew that I wanted to finish the project on the car ride back to Chicago so I took advantage of the supplies Anne had available.

Ironing my fabric

Sewing my binding strips together

Before I left for the afternoon, I shopped the fabric wall and a few bins Anne had under the tables. We talked about the fabrics I had chosen and even planned out how to use a few of them.  For one fabric Anne showed me how to do a burn test.

Clearly, I did not go home empty-handed

Conducting a burn test

My heart was so happy after spending the afternoon with these ladies. If St. Louis was closer I would plan to come down again soon. As it is, I will definitely visit next summer when I'm at sewing machine repair camp. If you're in the neighborhood or passing through St. Louis on your travels, stop in to City Sewing Room. Whether you choose to sew, craft, or just draw inspiration for a next project you'll surround yourself with friends.