N.B. quilting shop provides unique experience that extends further than a blanket

Making quilts has been a past-time for Lorette Cole for nearly five decades. She first picked up the craft in 1977 when she was pregnant with her oldest child.

“We’ve travelled the world, we’ve lived in many parts of the world and quilting has been the stability for me, the mental challenge, I have to keep my hands busy so quilting and appliqué and embroidery are my favourites,” she said.

In fact, to this day, she still has her first ever sewing machine that she used to make doll clothes with as a child.

In 2014, when her husband was retiring and the pair were moving back to New Brunswick, Cole set her sights on opening her very own quilting store.

“I bought a long arm and I said that was it, this is what I’ll be doing once we move back home,” she said.

Knowing there were a lot of quilters in the area, Cole renovated her mother-in-law’s childhood home, brought in two long-arm machines and Spruce It Up Quilt Shop became a reality on June 10, 2014.

“I wanted to give [quilters] the opportunity to be able to machine quilt, long-arm machine quilt, their own treasures instead of them having to either hand quilt it or to send it out to a long armer,” she explained.

“My very first experience with long arming is once I received my quilt from my long armer, it was no longer mine, so I wanted to give the opportunity of people the chance to do their own quilt and say ‘I did it all myself.’”

Staff members work alongside quilters on the long arm to make sure that everything is done properly and they are there to help in anyway they can.

On top of that, the store is also filled with different supplies, offers a block of the month pattern for other quilters and even has RV parking for people who want to come visit from further away.

Cole says they’ve seen people from all over the Maritimes and even other parts of Canada and the United States.

“We will guide them through fabric choices, the amounts that they will need, the colours they might want to combine, also we’ve even drawn out patterns for them and written out the pattern,” she said. “So we’re an all around quilt shop really, we offer everything, every service.”

Sally Spence was the first customer to try the long arm machine. Her husband renovated the old farm house and she is now the business’ longest employee.

“I would say to Blair, when he came home from work, ‘I don’t know what she’s thinking building a business like that in Upper Cape, that’s just not going to fly, that’s just not going to go anywhere, we just don’t have the traffic,’ but anyways I came out, she convinced me to quilt and project and I was so excited I raced right out of here to a girlfriend’s house, ‘See what I did,’” she laughed.

Now, nearly a decade later, Spence works at Spruce It Up Quilts full time and has seen the business grow throughout the years.

“I would say to my girlfriends, ‘Oh, what a shame, quilting is becoming obsolete because we used to gather and hand quilt’ and then when I used the long arm I ran to my girlfriends and said, ‘Look at what I did, but I’ll still hand quilt’ and then quickly the hand quilting went to the wayside and there I was long arming everything,” she said.

Overall, the shop offers so much more than just a warm blanket.

“It’s like mental health therapy, you know, you sit down at your sewing machine and you quilt up whatever and when you’re busy doing something you don’t have time to think or dwell on all those issues that might be irritating or on your plate,” said Spence.

It also aims to bring quilters together.

On Monday, quilts were being made for Victoria’s Quilts, an organization that makes quilts for people with cancer across Canada.

“You can cure a lot with a little bit of thread and a needle,” said Cole.

In just a few hours, more than 10 quilts were completed for the organization.

In nearly 10 years since opening, the small quilting shop has helped create more than 12,000 quilts.

Cole said Spruce It Up Quilts started as a retirement project of sorts, but today that is the last thing on her mind.

“As long as my vision holds, as long as my fingers keep operating, I’ll be stitching,” she said.

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