Saturday was the grand opening of a new craft shop just outside of Central Square. Gather Here is a fabric, stitching and knitting mecca at 370 Broadway in Cambridge. They are open Wednesday through Sunday each week with their late days being Wednesday and Thursday.
I made it a little late to their grand opening on Saturday arriving around noon. The yarn area (on the right hand side of the store) was completely swamped with knitters, who were having a bit of gathering in a group of comfy looking seats near a gorgeous mural. The walls were well stocked with yarns ranging from the uber affordable Peaches and Creme to things like Kidlin, which are fairly hard to come by even with the lovely collection of yarn shops in the greater Boston area.
The left hand side of the store was mostly reserved for sewing. There are a number of sewing machines for classes and I believe they can also be rented and used on site. There was a lovely wall of basic cotton fabrics (though Virginia noted when I came in looking for a slew of fabric that they were missing grey and black) in the middle of the store and along the left hand wall were prints. A lot of these prints were fanciful, perfect for pillows, toys and items for kids, though I know plenty of adults who would completely rock a whale print skirt.
The column in the middle has the cotton fabric on one side, but the opposite side has bolts (on rolls) of some Liberty fabrics. i had never seen a Liberty fabric in person before, and while I could see the quality immediately and understand the allure I also was a little surprised by the sticker shock. My fault for not sewing more regularly. Above the Liberty fabrics are rolls of Aida cloth in weights ranging from 11 ct to 18. Pretty much exactly what you need to work on Ophelia (some day I will finish you).
An aside: It has got to be a bad sign when the project you are referring too is so old that it appears that the company has gone out of business. I was going to link it, but I cannot even find a finished one to show off. The project is a fully stitched rendition of Ophelia (not the Waterhouse one) and is 358x599 stitches. It is huge and the best picture I can find is this one. It's kind of a forever project, because a single square inch can take multiple hours. Whew!
There is a modest selection of DMC floss and hoops as well as a number of items from Sublime Stitching. It is not the place where you would find your traditional cross stitch patterns. They might expand more in that direction in time, and I know that they are hoping to eventually be 7 days a week.
They are doing Knitter's Brunches on Saturday mornings (10 am to noon) with a continental breakfast. The full class schedule is supposed to be up sometime midweek. I'm looking forward to a place to craft with other people where I can chat and hang out without boring my husband!
I bought a yard of this. Maybe I'll be the one rocking the whale skirt!
