Made in Utah
There's a decent chance the machine you quilt on, the thread in it, and the fabric under the needle were all made within an hour of Salt Lake City. Utah is one of the most important places in American quilting, and hardly anybody says so out loud.
Longarm machines
This is the remarkable part. Two of the significant longarm quilting machine manufacturers in the world sit about twenty miles apart in the Salt Lake valley.
Handi Quilter is in North Salt Lake, founded in 2001 by Laurel Barrus, a lifelong quilter. It has grown into the top-selling longarm manufacturer anywhere — a 70,000 square foot corporate, production and manufacturing facility, with a 10,000 square foot education studio attached. Some components come from abroad, but the machines are assembled on the floor in North Salt Lake, and they reach quilters through roughly 900 independent retailers across 55 countries.
The Grace Company is in West Jordan and has been building quilting frames for more than thirty-five years — it was among the first companies anywhere to manufacture machine quilting frames at all. It makes the Qnique longarm machines, designed alongside its own frames, and builds frames that fit most major quilting machines. Unlike Handi Quilter, you can walk in: it sells fabric and notions too, and seeing a longarm properly set up before spending serious money on one is worth the trip.
Thread
Superior Threads was started in St. George in 1998 by Heather and Bob Purcell, working out of their garage, and grew into one of the better-known thread names in quilting. In 2016 it was acquired by Handi Quilter — so the two Utah stories are really one.
Thread manufacturing has continued in St. George since, and Fab Fabrics on 2580 South carries a thread selection well beyond what a general quilt shop stocks, alongside a four-room retreat center at the same address. The corporate relationships between the thread businesses at that site have shifted over the years and we haven't been able to pin down their current shape — but the practical upshot for you is a deeper thread wall than you'll find almost anywhere.
Fabric
Riley Blake Designs is headquartered in Lehi. Bret and Cindy Cloward founded it in 2008 because they wanted prints with a more sophisticated look than what was then on offer, and it has since become one of the significant fabric houses in quilting — around 82 employees, and known for its Confetti Cottons range of roughly 300 solids.
Here's the part that matters for this directory: Riley Blake sells exclusively through independent retailers and quilt shops — no big-box, no direct-to-consumer undercutting of its own stockists. Every bolt of it you've ever bought came through a shop like the ones listed on this site, in the US, Canada, Australia, Europe and Asia.
ADORNit up in Hyde Park works the same way at a smaller scale — it designs its own fabric and craft products, sold through shops around the world, and you can visit the home shop in Cache Valley.
Minky
If you've noticed that Utah fabric shops carry far more minky than shops elsewhere, there's a reason.
Minky Couture began in Ogden in 2009, when Sandi Hendry sewed a blanket for her adult daughter during a serious illness. Friends and family started asking to buy them. The company now runs stores across the state, and the blankets are still hand-sewn in Utah — seamstresses collect bins of material from the Ogden headquarters a few times a week and sew at home.
That's a lot of local demand for minky, and the shops responded. The Fabric Mill in Orem, Fabric Center in West Jordan and Cozy Minky out in Vernal all carry it in a depth that surprises visitors from other states.
Why this matters if you shop here
It's a nice piece of trivia that Utah punches so far above its weight. But there's a practical side too.
- You can see the machines in person. Buying a longarm from photographs is a poor way to spend several thousand dollars. Between The Grace Company in West Jordan, Handi Quilter's education studio in North Salt Lake, and dealers like Quilts on the Corner and Canyonland Quilts, Utah quilters have unusually good access.
- Servicing is local. A machine built forty minutes away is a different proposition from one that has to be shipped across the country.
- The independent shops aren't incidental. Riley Blake and Handi Quilter both reach customers through independent retailers rather than around them. The shops in this directory are the distribution network for a genuine Utah industry — which is a decent argument for buying from them rather than online.
Know of a Utah company we've missed — a fabric designer, a notions maker, a mill? We'd genuinely like to hear about it. Get in touch.