Sometimes loyal customers of the Portsmouth Fabric Company get stuck in a sort of sewer’s block. Owner Gretchen Rath said they walk through the high aisles of colorful and patterned fabric bolts to the Brick Wall Gallery in the back of the shop to find inspiration.
“They’ve got ideas they need to get out,” Rath said. “It’s just very satisfying to be creative and to know that what you’re doing is not anything anyone else is doing.”

This month, the Portsmouth Fabric Company is hosting a textile art exhibit, sales and charity events to celebrate 30 years of providing sewers with materials to create quilts, garments, home decorations and art.

The Brick Wall Gallery and the upstairs studio will feature a retrospective of works by regional fabric artists who have shown at the company over the past three decades. The exhibit will run through Sunday, July 26.

Artists include master sewers who offer classes in the studio, such as former manager Susan Carlson. Her art quilt, called “Polka Dodo,” is a complex and colorful combination of polka dot fabrics, tulle, and swirling stitches that together form the shape of a bird, bordered by Australian fabrics. She uses shadowing and light catching materials to make a life-like image. Some of the other artists in the show are Susan Forsman, whose quilts look like flower gardens, Dianne Hire, who has an angular, experimental style, and Wren Redmond, who invented a fabric hologram technique. 

Rath set up shop in July of 1978 in a third-floor studio in downtown Portsmouth with an original vision of producing custom clothing as well as providing a venue for designer fabric shows. Within a year, she realized the market was shifting toward retail, high-quality textiles.

When a former art gallery on Penhallow Street became available in 1979, she opened the Portsmouth Fabric Company. Soon after, Rath also began selling sewing machines. Fashion fabrics were the focus for the first few years but, she said, lifestyles began to change. Fewer people were wearing tailored clothing or making their own clothes. 

After the American Bicentennial, there was a renewed interest in quilts nationwide. The shop’s focus changed again with textiles specifically for the art quilting enthusiast. Since then, the company has become a destination for quilters in the Seacoast area and around the country, through online shopping.

“I just kind of moved in the direction that the industry was going,” Rath said.

There are still fabrics available for people who want to make a garment, handbag or wearable art. The company carries difficult to find, contemporary fabrics and designer brands, such as Kaffe Fassett and Amy Butler. Rath said many of her customers follow design trends for the latest patterns and color schemes.

“It’s a creative venue,” Rath said. “People need a creative outlet. Using their hands, that’s what people need.”

The store is not only filled with colorful quilts, but also has everything a sewer needs to make their own. There are instruction and inspiration books, patterns, sewing machines, fabric, thread and buttons.

There are also classes available in the clean, newly remodeled third story with bright natural and overhead lighting. Rath said people are not being taught to sew as often as they used to, but there has been renewed interest in learning. Classes range from the basics to advanced techniques such as quilting, shapes and shading, and embroidery. All of these have been made easier by technology, but even skilled sewers have to learn to operate the new sewing machines.

Rath has managed to maintain a downtown location, despite chain store competition in the area, by keeping regular customers with a newsletter and gaining new ones at regional quilt shows. The industry will survive the economic downturn, she said, because people tend to return to sewing when money is tight. Also, the market for handcrafts is continuing to expand through new media and online shops.

On June 27, the store hosted a sewing machine sale and started a two-week fabric sale to celebrate its anniversary. Its place in the community will also be marked with charity events that run through July.

There will be demonstrations on embroidering, and the finished stuffed bears will go to children in emergency care at Portsmouth Regional Hospital. Donations will go directly to Families First medical care programs for low-income families in the region. A colorful “Summer Breeze” quilt will be raffled with all proceeds donated to a young mother of five children who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. A state-of-the art Bernina limited edition sewing machine will also be raffled with proceeds benefiting the American Heart Association through the Bernina “Sew Red” program.
 
The Portsmouth Fabric Company is located at 112 Penhallow St., Portsmouth, 603-436-6343, www.portsmouthfabric.com.