It was a quilt, or the desire for one, that started it all. “It was February of 2019,” recalls Jessica Thomas, founder and owner of Handiwork in Portland. “It was a sunny Sunday morning, and I was drinking my coffee and looking through a catalog that had come in the mail.” Featured prominently in its pages was a quilt dotted with cheerful circles in small prints and bright colors, a quilt that Thomas had coveted for years but had never purchased. “But this morning I was looking at it and thinking, this isn’t that complicated a design. I found myself wishing I had a place that I could go where I could ask someone how to make this pattern, how do I improvise this, how do I even get started.”

But she couldn’t seem to find the magical local place that would offer classes, and expert advice, and crafting supplies, not just for quilting but for other kinds of crafts. So Thomas began, tentatively, to plan to open such a place herself. “This neighborhood and this city and this state are so full of creative and talented people who would love to share their knowledge and expertise: the resources are out there,” she recalls thinking. A librarian by training, she was used to pulling resources together; this, she reasoned, would just be assembling people rather than books. “I was coming up with a reader’s guide to crafting!” she laughs. “I was making people aware of what’s out there and helping them connect with the right support at the right time, making a place for beginners to try a new craft and start to get comfortable with it.” Meanwhile, the old Jet Video space came on the market, right down the street from her house. It was like a quilt top being pieced together: everything was fitting into place.

Thomas signed her lease in January 2020 and, after extensively renovating the space, launched her website in early March, planning to start offering workshops and classes in May. Then came the pandemic, the shutdown, and several months of uncertainty. “I thought maybe this situation would last a couple of weeks,” she recalls ruefully. But she found herself having to pivot to a more straightforward retail business, at least while gathering indoors for classes remained off-limits. Fortunately, she’d already lined up some good possibilities: “There are a lot of super creative people in Maine who don’t want to have their own retail space, or even their own Etsy shop. It was a big part of my vision for this place.”