Business & Tech

The Quilted Fox: Quilting Heaven

Louise Georgia has run this business on the second floor of LaChateau Village for 17 1/2 years.

on the second floor of LaChateau Village (go in the east entrance with the blue awning) has over 6,000 bolts of material with fabrics from Asia, Australia, and Africa and other countries. For 17 1/2 years Webster Groves resident Louise Georgia has held forth with this specialty shop in Frontenac. Patch caught up with Georgia for the Business Buzz this week:

Ladue-Frontenac Patch: You are from Central Illinois (Galesburg), how did you migrate to St. Louis.

Louise Georgia: Well, I’ve been here 40 years. My husband and I lived in Chicago for three years then he was transferred to San Francisco and finally we settled here and this is where I raised my family.

He was with a heating and cooling company, Climatrol.

Patch: How did the concept of the Quilted Fox take off.

Georgia: I do love quilting. When I my children left the nest so to speak I felt like for a year I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I had always sewn but never had quilted. A friend got me into quilting and a friend got my into a job at a quilt store one day a week.

I chose this area to open my own store and it is central to everything and near the highways and we have a lot of clients who are from out of town.

It was a little touch and go when they had the highway closed (for reconstruction).

I love it because you end up making a lot of friends as repeat customers.

Patch: Being on the second floor of this building, is that any issue.

Georgia: Quilters will search you out.

Patch: Quilting just seems like such an important part of Americana.

Georgia: People who are not in quilting have no idea how many are in it. Once a year they have a quilt convention at the convention center in Houston and it is their biggest event of the year. We have quilt market the week before so I always go to that show.

Patch: What kinds of phone calls do you get about quilting.

Georgia: We get a lot of calls on how to care for them and store them. People seem to realize the value. There are two people in St. Louis who do appraisals for AQS, the American Quilting Society of Paducah. I had one appraised the other day for $2,500 and I’ve seen a whole lot more.

Some of the Catholic schools in particular, the senior classes will auction them off. Sometimes they get well over $10,000 for them. In fact one went so high one time, we agreed to make a second quilt if you would both pay that amount.

Patch: Quilt sales seem so important at places like festivals and county fairs.

Georgia: Yes, but its amazing how interest has picked up in places like Japan and England and Australia. Weekly, we ship something to Australia. We do have an internet presence.

Patch: You do conduct classes for your customers, right.

Georgia: We are open seven days  a week and classes run seven days a week. We have classes for technique or projects to make a particular thing.  Our classes are small so they get a lot of individual attention and they can be here as little as two hours, or all day.

Patch: Is this tradition handed down from mother to daughter.

Georgia: Many times it skips a generation. Often it is the grandmother handing the skills down to the grand daughter.

The Quilted Fox

10403 Clayton Road,  LaChateau Village, second floor

Phone: 314-993-1181

Hours: Monday and Wednesday, 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m.

Tuesday and Thursday, 9:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m.

Friday and Saturday, 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

Sunday, noon-4:00 p.m.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

More from Ladue-Frontenac