Nikki Rainey has always loved sewing. Throughout moving with her husband, from military base to military base, she funneled her love into the art of long arm quilting (quilt finishing). Now settled in Colorado Springs, she was able to partner in a fabric shop with her friend Marybeth Wujcik and her dream of owning a brick-and-mortar store came to reality in Nana’s Quilt Cottage.
“I’ve found [now] that I’ve passed on my passion for sewing. Sewing doesn’t meet an age criteria. You don’t have to be a certain age to love to sew and love to create.” Their whole motto at Nana’s Quilt Cottage is “Get Creative.”
Rainey says her creativity just happened to be in fiber arts. “I’m playing with needle and thread and fabric. But there’s so many other people who love creativity in other realms, whether it be paper crafting or wood or other art mediums. It’s really fun.”
Self-Taught with Skill
Rainey is self-taught. “But I’ve been sewing since I was 14.” She learned how to sew in a home economics classroom, which is not really offered in high schools anymore. “That’s where I learned to sew by a teacher who took a moment and showed me some skills. She kind of let the reins go and let me just kind of go my own way and create. I’ve just been a sponge to absorb knowledge, and I share that knowledge.”
She explains, “The tools we use today, had my grandmother had those tools, my gosh, that woman would’ve been on fire because even without the tools I have, she was on fire.” Rainey is proud that she comes from a long line of quilters. Her business partner, Marybeth Wujcik, also comes from a line of sewers. Marybeth is Rainey’s silent partner and still consults regularly on a variety of subjects.
Wujcik started the store in 2010 with a vision to have a quilt shop of her own. She had worked in the fabric industry for many years in retail, and she felt she could pass on a lot of knowledge to others. She and her daughter opened Nana’s Quilt Cottage that December during a down economy. Rainey explains, “I was there [initially] visiting her just as a customer at Nana’s for many years.” In May 2014, Wujcik asked Rainey if she would be her business partner.
Rainey was able to buy into the business with her long arm quilting experience of nearly 20 years. She had set up quilt finishing businesses at many of her husband’s stations in such places as Manhattan, Kansas, El Paso, Texas, Columbus, Georgia and even a small village in Germany while also teaching other military wives how to sew.
“We took that [long arm] machine with us overseas everywhere. And I finished people’s quilts. But I learned really quickly that not as many people sewed as I thought. So, I got this idea. I said, ‘Well, if I teach people how to sew and teach them how to make a quilt, then they’ll need my services because I’m the one who finishes the job.’”
Building and Evolving a Fabric Business
Rainey brought that expertise to Nana’s tenfold. “Being an owner of a brick-and-mortar fabric store has always been my dream. The long arming was [simply] my way to get [there] … just to build myself up and educate myself, and also just be a part of the industry. So right now, I’m living my dream at the pinnacle. I’m at the top of the world.”
But as anyone who’s ever built a business knows, it’s hard and it takes everything about you to do it, which Rainey concedes. “There’s a lot of sweat equity in it and I didn’t know anything about running that type of retail business.” Rainey had run her long arm business for, at that point, 14 years.
“I actually kind of took a pay cut when I came to the store because I basically said…my way of buying in the stores is that I give all my profits from my long arming into the store. That was my buy-in, which was the most gracious buy-in ever. I didn’t have to go get a loan and cut a check. I bought in with my work and my loyalty. So I had to learn a lot of things. I had to learn how to order fabric and how to not over order and how to keep stock and inventory right [as well as] work with vendors. I also had to learn how to say no.”
Finding the Learning Curve
One of the biggest learning curves and happy accidents in recent years was the influx of online learning, which only increased with the pandemic. This allowed Nana’s to attract some new perspectives. “Our base clientele, our top 20 customers, they’re all 60-plus. But we are getting a lot more younger moms.” She says the younger customers do have a much more restricted income and restricted expendable money. “It requires a slightly more modern approach while understanding that customers sometimes need to work with what they have.”
While Nana’s is primarily a quilt shop, Rainey says that they also teach how to sew bags, pouches and little fun things. “Our goal is to teach people how to sew and to go on to make things that are enjoyable for them.”
Some of these new sewers create purses, tote bags, grocery bags and other practical things. Rainey says that this is reflected in the fabrics Nana’s carries but also in the design of the store. “We have more of a modern feel … bright, fresh fabrics. You’re not going to find your grandma’s reproductions here. You’re not going to find the ‘30s and the ‘40s fabrics here. [The mills] do keep printing those colors because people love them. But that’s not Nana’s. Even though we have a grandma name, we have a very fresh take on sewing.”
Rainey says “when you make a quilt or you make something [like that], it’s a tangible hug. It’s something you made. It’s a piece of you, in your heart, that you’re giving to someone else. So it’s something that’s tangible. It’s a real hug from you to them. It’s a gift of love that’s made by your creativity because only you can make it that way. It’s not something you bought at the store. It’s an expression of art.”
Rainey says some artists use a paintbrush. Some artists use a pencil. She uses a sewing machine and thread. That’s her medium. “That’s how I create, and that’s how I show my artistic expression. My artistic expression isn’t a flat thing that’s on a wall – though it can be on a wall – but my artistic expression is also something that I can wrap around my body. I can carry my stuff in it. It is something that I have made with my hands and my machine.”
Rainey says she does all her work by machine. “I am not a hand quilter in any way. Not that it’s a bad thing or anything else. It’s just my style. My power tool is a sewing machine.”
