If your business model is to serve as a “no-kill shelter” for fabrics, you can’t just throw out fabrics and other crafting supplies when your shelves start to overflow.
So instead of sending overflow to a landfill, Kathryn Greenwood Swanson, owner of Swanson’s Fabrics, opted to open a second location to address the need for more space. In addition to its home base at 320 Avenue A in Turners Falls, Swanson’s Fabrics now operates an outpost at 9 Mill St. in Greenfield.
Greenwood Swanson advised that patrons should still plan to bring donations to and shop at the Turners Falls location, called The Stash House, but online orders will be packaged in Greenfield. On the e-store, Swanson’s Fabrics sells select fabrics, yarns, threads, fiberworks books and patterns, and more that you cannot get in person at The Stash House.
“We are going to move our website inventory into this room,” Greenwood Swanson described at the Greenfield location last week. “The website is the easiest thing to move, and what it does over at The Stash House is double our shop space and increases the size of our donation room.
“The expansion of the donation room is going to take a lot of pressure off,” she continued, noting that the classroom will be “much more of a dedicated sewing studio.”
Greenwood Swanson said most workshops and classes that require equipment like sewing machines will remain at the Turners Falls location, but some hand-based crafts could be offered at the new site instead. Discussing the Greenfield location, she added, “We anticipate that handwork, like knitting and rug making, will happen here, where we don’t need a things like a cutting table.”
No classes are currently on the calendar for the new location, as Greenwood Swanson is still working on moving in. She plans to put in new carpet and set up shelving.
The Greenfield location will also be used as a content production studio for the store’s new Patreon page. Patreon is an internet-based membership and monetization platform that allows content creators to build a page with varying subscription tiers.
On the Swanson’s Fabrics page, Greenwood Swanson said she will teach different classes, and all membership tiers will have the same access to videos. The tiers, which range from $5 per month to $150 per month, let subscribers choose how much they want to support Swanson’s Fabrics and what they can afford.
Greenwood Swanson purchased the approximately 1,600-square-foot space from Leyden resident and performing artist Jack Golden and his wife, Lisa Limont, for $165,000 in July. Golden had owned the building for 17 years and had used it as a studio to practice his circus acts. While he said he had gotten another offer from a company that wished to use the space as a tax preparation office, once he received a letter from Greenwood Swanson and saw the connections between them, he knew he had to sell to her.
To celebrate the new space, Swanson’s hosted a rug-braiding workshop on Sept. 25. During the event, Golden said he thought it was neat that Swanson’s Fabrics is a company dedicated to recycling fabric and that he has a clown show about recycling. In another case of serendipity, Golden had worked at the circus that inspired Greenwood Swanson’s cousin, Madeline ffitch, to pursue a career in the arts. She, in turn, inspired Greenwood Swanson.
“I’m very glad this space is continuing on as a creative space,” Golden said.
Greenwood Swanson said she had been looking all over the county for a place that could serve as a second location for Swanson’s Fabrics, and finding the Mill Street spot felt right.
“It felt like we were divinely guided to this real estate,” Greenwood Swanson said.
While celebrating the new location on Sept. 25, Greenwood Swanson invited ffitch to read a portion of her new book, “Avalon, Rise.” The book follows a small cast of characters as they respond to an influx of white nationalists in their small Appalachian town in 2017.
Greenwood Swanson said the book felt timely for the current political climate, and added that the story included a section about rug braiding, which she helped her cousin research.
“It’s about a small town coming together to figure out how to fight fascism and white supremacy, and the different characters and personalities all trying to come together for a common purpose,” Greenwood Swanson said.
Ffitch explained how, in the book, white nationalists promote rug weaving as a European folk art and discourage some characters from learning the craft. The characters later learn, however, that rug braiding does not belong to any one culture.
“Some textiles and some crafts have very specific and traceable lineage, and some don’t,” ffitch said. Addressing Greenwood Swanson, she added, “I was fascinated when you were talking about that, and this idea that something could be invented in many different places because there’s something very intuitive about what they’re doing.”
Greenwood Swanson said rug braiding, which has appeared throughout history around the world, offers a “100% recycled, usable craft” and creates a product that is machine washable. She added that the practice is a great way to reuse fabrics that the crafter may not want to make clothes out of, like old bedsheets.
For more information or to find future events, visit swansonsfabrics.com.
