Our family feels a great sense of pride owning these historical Hennessey buildings and with that comes a great deal of responsibility for their upkeep. The buildings are over 100 years old now and we’ve been working to slowly update them as needed. We’ve added new flooring in the Hive, which serves as our Prairie Quilt retreat and classroom space and replaced a large old window on the north side of the Prairie Quilt building and added a beautiful new door to the front of the store. Inside we’ve worked to put in a wall that was the old LaPorte’s pharmacy pickup counter- that area now functions as a breakroom for our team.
I decided to have some fun with the center room of our store. We replaced some of the original flooring that had been water damaged over the years and it was going to be nearly impossible to get a perfect match for the original boards, so we chose to paint the floors in that room. It really brightens the space and gives it a fresh and exciting look. I’ve collected old books for over 20 years and many were beginning to lose their binding and so I took out interesting pages and wallpapered the walls with them, page by page. You’ll see old Reader’s Digest condensed books and old copies of books like Heidi and Alice and Wonderland throughout the room. This allowed for more wall space for hanging finished quilts too, which we sell a lot of now. We often have men stop into the store on their way through town and they are looking for gifts for their mom or grandmother who are lovers of quilts. You’ll find many of our finished quilts with price tags on them for purchase now, and if we’re not yet ready to sell them we encourage customers to leave their information with us to be contacted when they are available to purchase.
I grew up coming into this store with my Grandma Patsy and I have fond memories of running errands to LaPorte’s and to Lois’s fabric shop where I’d thumb through all of the Butterick and McCall’s book and look at all the buttons she had on display. I feel really honored to have these stores now and be able to give my kids their own memories here.
