All sewn up

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This article was published 29/12/2017 (3035 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Cross-stitch art is where you fill a canvas perforated with tens of thousands of microscopic squares by stitching an X with dyed fabric into each square.

After days, months and, in some cases, years of cross-stitching, you step back and see that each little x of fabric has formed a pointillist-like painting, but in cotton instead of acrylics.

If you’re just learning this now, it’s too late. The last cross-stitch art shop in Winnipeg, where once there were four, is closing its doors.

Sheena’s Gallery, after 25 years serving the hobby market in cross-stitch and other stitching crafts, is shutting down at the end of the year.

“I had one gentleman, he gave me a big hug and had to leave because he got all choked up,” owner Sheena Buckner said.

At the other end of the emotional spectrum, customer Judy Paquette turned grouchy when reminded that her favourite hobby shop is not long for this world.

“I’m really annoyed about the whole thing,” Paquette said, visiting the brick-and-mortar shop on St. Mary’s Road for perhaps the last time. “It’s a big, huge hole.”

Paquette is part of the league of benignly obsessed stitchers. A typical cross-stitch canvas takes about four months to fill, but many can easily take a year. There’s one male customer cross-stitching a painting of an English countryside that will require 614,600 stitches in 70 colours. He estimates that, at his daily rate of stitching, it will take six years to complete.

Cross-stitching was once much bigger. Eaton’s and the Bay department stores in downtown Winnipeg would devote large sections to cross-stitching and other needlepoint art. The Bay would buy back people’s cross-stitch art so customers could see what a completed pattern looked like.

It was a good deal for the department store, because it took so long to stitch the patterns. Some of the most popular patterns were by Winnipeg designer Jean McIntosh. Sheena’s Gallery still has a few of her patterns left.

Other stores servicing the cross-stitch market in the recent past were Petit Point Gallery on Provencher, Stitch and Frame in Transcona, and Mrs. Twitchett’s on Pembina Highway.

Today, there is no cross-stitch shop in Ottawa or Toronto or in Saskatchewan. There is one outside Calgary and a couple in Ontario still left.

It seems needlework has taken other hits recently, with the closing of Ram Wools Yarn Co-op and Mitchell Fabrics in 2017.

Sheena’s Gallery is shuttering not because her business isn’t viable, but because no one wants to own it and she wants to retire.

Buckner, who hasn’t lost her Scottish accent even though she immigrated here when she was 18 and is now 67, said the problem isn’t lack of customers, but thin margins. The markup is only double, versus triple in many other retail sectors.

It’s a testament to her friendly shopkeeper persona that Buckner, who one customer described as “very bubbly,” has nearly 250 email addresses of customers who want to stay in touch and find other outlets to support their cross-stitch obsessions. They’ve written their emails down on lined paper left on the counter.

They will now have to order online, but many people like to feel the textures and see the colours in person. Buckner is trying to convince Needlepoint Place on Osborne Street, the last needle art shop left, to take some of her stock.

Buckner had to stop the interviewer several times for insinuating needlework is a female pastime. “A lot of men stitch,” she corrected. Besides Rosey Grier? “I would say 40 per cent of my customers are men,” she said.

“They’re doing cross-stitch because they don’t want to do woodworking during winter time. You want to keep your hands busy. You don’t want to smoke, you don’t want to drink.”

She won’t bite on the suggestion that the internet has hollowed out the pastime as it has many other sectors. She thinks it’s just that no one wants to run a store.

In fact, a new trend in the hobby is called “subversive” cross-stitch. Buckner said she has framed cross-stitch art that said “Don’t Smoke Weed in the Bathroom,” and “F#$! This House.”

Sheena’s Gallery is also a framing shop and some of her frames on display are more beautiful than the images inside them. It has handmade frames more than a century old, with edging of gilded filigree, that are worth up to $2,000. The store is in a former suburban bank and Buckner keeps many cotton art pieces in its steel vault.

For the final sale, stock was marked down 30 per cent and was to drop to 40 to 50 per cent off on Boxing Day.

For her, it’s simply time to stop minding the shop six days a week with no sick days, vacation days or pension benefits. Her husband has been retired 10 years already.

“He keeps seeing trips where if you leave the next morning, it’s a quarter of the price, and we like things like that. We’re spontaneous.”

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca