Patching the Fabric Hole

Winter Solstice focuses on garment fabrics, including specialty fibers like Polartec and satin. “I just couldn’t imagine living in a town that had no access to garment material,” Kaler says. “You have to touch it… You need to feel the stretch.”

In contrast to quilting, where woven cotton fabrics are typical, garment sewing involves many different fabric types with widely varied textures and properties. Knit fabric can hug the body, reducing the need for shaping techniques like gathers or darts, but it also comes with widely varied stretch—think of the difference between a boxy t-shirt and a pair of yoga pants. Garment fabrics can also involve many different blends, combining natural materials like cotton, linen, or wool with synthetics like polyester, Lycra, or spandex.

“For me, if you say it’s 73 percent blah and 22 blah and 1 percent, I won’t know that is,” Kaler says. She believes sewists can only determine those things in person.

The Winter Solstice logo features an octopus with more than eight legs—a metaphor for the crafting process, for which one can never have too many arms. In keeping with that, the shop also stocks notions and yarn and has a class space Kaler hopes will empower new sewists and foster community. While she acknowledges the limits of her current space—“It’s not ideal, and it’s not accessible”—Kaler says having a place to start gives her a chance to figure out the business while building her customer base.

Joann’s closing also pushed Cynthia Nelson of Fairbanks to move forward with a quilting shop. “It was always my retirement dream,” she says. Then a local fabric shop, Northern Threads, announced plans to close the end of 2025 after struggles to find a new buyer. That store eventually found one and will remain open, but Joann’s closure in May clinched Nelson’s decision to speed up her timeline. She opened an online store, Frozen Fabrics, in June, followed by a physical space in early August.

Frozen Fabrics stocks quilting cottons, batting, patterns, and kits. Nelson also added threads and other notions customers asked for. After Joann’s closed, “You couldn’t get thread in town or scissors or pins or bobbins or things like that,” she says. Despite her focus on quilting, she also added buttons. “That was a big request.”

Customer requests have also influenced some of the prints Frozen Fabrics carries. Nelson added military, firefighter, first responder, and police prints based on requests, as well as fleece.

Service for Locals

For Ivy Spohnholz, new owner of Cabin Fever Fabric, Fiber & Gifts in downtown Anchorage, kuspuk makers’ needs have driven several changes. The shop tripled its stock of rickrack trim, she says, and “sold more ribbon in the last five months than most of last year.” Spohnholz has also added more floral prints and designs that “really lend themselves well” to coordinating with the trims Cabin Fever sells.

Spohnholz, a former state legislator with nonprofit and public sector experience, was a few months into figuring out her next role when Cabin Fever’s founder Jana Hayenga announced her retirement and search for a buyer. Spohnholz, herself a knitter, took just a few months to decide she wanted to make Cabin Fever her next focus.

In 2023, Hayenga had relocated Cabin Fever—then a standalone shop—and combined it with her two other businesses, Wooly Mammoth and The Quilted Raven. The consolidated shop has since served a mix of knitters, sewists (especially quilters), and tourists. To continue serving some of the store’s core customers, Spohnholz says she makes sure to always have a quilting expert on the premises. She’s also adjusted the store’s hours.

In 2026, for the first time, Cabin Fever is staying open during January and February rather than closing for the winter. “That’s a time when a lot of quilters are working on projects,” Spohnholz says. She’s also extended daily hours to 7 p.m. so more people can come by after work. “A lot of these shifts are in part about making sure that we can service Alaskans well,” she says.

Fiber N’ Ice in Wasilla focuses on hand-dyed, specialty yarns like superwash wool, so Joann’s closure hasn’t affected owner Denise Morrison as much. She’s considering adding some cotton yarns, though, since she’s getting more requests for them.

For Morrison and Kaler, adapting to customer needs includes use of fibers beyond their core customers. Morrison says she’s had customers come in looking for wool to cover a beehive. And Kaler hopes to help address villagers’ needs for casket-lining material, often satin, that she believes no other Alaska shop stocks.

Customers might not even realize all the needs that craft shops can fill for them. Maybe someone blamed themselves for a bad first project but really the sewing machine needed a tune-up. Or maybe they gave up on garment sewing because of a fabric-pattern mismatch. “I think there are more people that want to [sew garments] than people realize,” Kaler says, citing Renaissance fairs and cosplay enthusiasts. “My goal is to create this community space.”

In addition to classes, Kaler wants to add monthly sewing drop-ins, where people can bring their projects and learn from each other. “When you sew with people, you’re also picking up tips and tricks,” she says. “I really want to empower everybody to do whatever garment is their dream garment, because everybody has some ‘dream’ something.”

Yes, sewing your own garments “takes a little bit longer, takes a little patience, takes some learning curves,” Kaler acknowledges, but she’s confident that, with help, more people will also find it rewarding.

Overcoming Small Business Challenges

Starting or acquiring and then operating these small businesses involve their own learning curve—for both owners and customers. At Frozen Fabrics, Nelson says she’s had to learn how fabrics get made, distributed, and sold. “I didn’t realize what it was going to take to actually order fabrics and notions and things like that,” she says.

Different distributors sell different fabrics. Nelson says she’s had customers ask about certain prints that her distributors might not carry. Some fabric designs also get printed in limited, one-time runs, which affects cost and availability. One distributor Nelson works with, Riley Blake Designs, offers some lower-cost fabrics, but they’re usually older designs. Other distributors may take orders months before the fabric ships.

Most fabrics also get printed or dyed outside the United States, which means tariffs increase costs. “Three of my quilt companies have all increased my tariff rates,” says Nelson. Still, she’s learning how to take advantage of discounts in the ordering process.

Furthermore, because she’s so immersed in the ordering details, Nelson can tell her customers more about certain fabrics she carries. “When people come in and they ask about certain collections,” Nelson says, “I’m able to tell them who the designer is… why they design the way they do, things like that. That’s been really fun.”

All three women also must weigh customer needs against their available space and budget. Spohnholz might add thread at Cabin Fever, but she might have to exclude something else to make room in the shop. Sewists usually like to match thread to fabric, which requires a wider range of colors and thus more display space. Some thread suppliers have also experienced supply chain issues. Nelson says an order she placed months ago for Gutermann thread—a German brand that makes its thread in multiple countries—hadn’t shipped to Fairbanks as of December.

Stocking the rainbow is also more complicated when it comes to niche items. Kaler says she had a customer come in asking for green taffeta, a stiff fabric often used in formal wear. “I can’t have all the colors of taffeta right now,” she says. “I can’t do this unless people shop and tell me what they want and put things on the wish list and have patience.”

Evolving Craft

That’s part of the post-Joann’s learning curve for customers. The chain’s demise, Corbett says, “forces artists to support local, but then of course if there’s items they don’t necessarily have—we’re in Alaska. Everything takes time to ship.”

Online retailers might offer lower prices, but they can have their downsides. An online seller might ship two yards of fabric as two one-yard pieces rather than a single, two yard-long piece, which might not be evident while ordering. The colors in the picture might look different, and the ease of online returns varies greatly by seller.

For crafters, these differences might mean budgeting more time to get creative or to scrounge around. “It’s amazing how much people don’t know what’s in their own community,” says Morrison. “Every day I have somebody say, ‘I didn’t know someone was here, selling yarn.’”

As Alaska shops and textile artists adapt to a post-Joann’s world, the creativity inherent to these fiber arts demonstrates a way forward. “Evolution is key to the survival of quilting,” Spohnholz says. She cites how what began as a way to resourcefully use precious fabric scraps has evolved into a hobby now often associated with leisure. The materials, tools, techniques, and even motives of these arts may change, but the humanity, variety, and possibility remain.