Katie Hennagir mixes art and business skills at Bay Window Quilt Shop

PERHAM

— Katie Hennagir’s great-grandfather would be proud of her. Her business, Bay Window Quilt Shop, has grown over the years and now makes use of his entire 7,000-some square foot building in downtown Perham.

Her great-grandfather on her mother’s side, Fred Bauck Jr., built the building in the very early 1900s, Katie said. “It was the general store for our community. It hosted the first doctor and the first dentist upstairs. It had a hat shop, and a hitching post out front for the horses.”

Katie’s grandfather, George Bauck, opened Bauck Paint and Supply in the building, and that part of the operation is owned by Katie’s husband, Jace. He also is the master of the shop’s longarm quilting machines, and serves as director at the Perham High School Area Learning Center.

Over the years, most of the building was divided up and rented out to outside businesses, A Red Owl grocery store occupied much of the main floor until around 1988, when it moved out to consolidate with another local grocery store.

In 1989, Katie’s mom, Sarah, started a crafts shop in the building.

“I was 10,” Katie said. “I wanted to work as soon as she’d let me.”

Katie is now 45. She and Jace have three children – Jack, 16, Izzy, 14, and Lola, 10, and Katie hasn’t lost that enthusiasm for the business she grew up with.

“It took us 100-some years to be the only renters in our own building,” she said.

When Katie came back from college, she helped her mom start a website, “and we started taking over parts of the building as we grew,” Katie said. “We grew as the (quilting) hobby grew. The hobby was not as popular in 1989 or even in 1999 as it is now.”

Quilting has become so popular in part because it’s satisfying to create a new quilt. “So many people say they love this hobby because you get something out of it in the end,” Katie said. It’s also popular because it’s a social hobby. “It’s something you do with others,” she said. “There is community in the hobby.”

Bay Window Quilt Shop serves people from all over the area. “We draw from an hour (travel) radius every day we’re open, because quilt people travel,” she said.

Of course, it helps that the quilt shop is a fun place to be, with its retail spaces full of colorful fabrics and patterns, both traditional and whimsical – and customers love its rooms and connecting areas with their nooks, crannies and closets.

“The joys of an over-100-year-old building,” Katie said with a laugh. “But I would never change it.”

The shop has a character all its own, that customers appreciate and that couldn’t be duplicated in a big box store.

The shop is also fun because Katie has the space to carry extra inventory, and she uses it.

“I go all-in on everything,” Katie said with a grin. “We have way more baby (designs) than most shops.”

Another example is quilting material, which is usually cotton or flannel, and Bay Window has “a ton of flannel,” she said. “We have almost 700 bolts of just flannel cloth. It’s unique to us – a lot of shops don’t have the space and just leave it out. We make room for it, it’s just soft.”

One area in the shop has sewing machines for sale, another has finished quilts for sale, and there’s a large space for quilting classes.

The shop now carries yarn as well, since a lot of quilters also like to knit.

“My mom’s motto always was ‘if three different customers ask for it, we’ll put it in – there’s a demand for it,’” Katie said. Katie started stocking yarn two years ago and hasn’t regretted it.

“We’ve also jumped back into crafts again,” she said. “We’ve come full circle to when mom opened the store in 1989. She sold crafts, not quilts.”

Katie doesn’t just sell quilting material, she is a talented quilt designer in her own right, with patterns sold at her shop and sold nationwide through Timeless Treasures Fabrics, a wholesale fabric supplier in New York City. “One of the things that sets my business apart, in high school I started designing my own patterns for our shop,” she said. “Most shops don’t have their own designers.”

She has created fabric designs for the past 17 years. “It’s sort of like being a freelancer,” she said. “I give them my design ideas, and they manufacture them – I just get royalties.”

Designing quilts is kind of like working a puzzle – you need an artistic vision and a good head for numbers. “There’s a lot of math, but I like math,” she said with a smile. “I write out all the instructions and test it before we put it in print.”

All quilt fabric comes in collections, she explained. “It’s all coordinated by design, color, style, season, whether flannel or cotton, decor, color schemes, trends,” she said. There is a turnaround of between six and eight months from the time one of her designs is sold and the time it shows up in quilt stores, she said.

The quilting business is “very event-driven,” Katie said. Bay Window recently held a quilting luncheon at the Perham golf course. “I do a trunk show presentation,” she said. “Holiday-themed quilts we’ve made for them to view.”

Those quilts are kept on display for six or eight months, until the shop is done selling all products associated with them. Then those quilts are put up for sale in a room in the back of the shop. It’s a nice selection, considering that the shop is geared towards hobbyists who like to make their own quilts, not necessarily towards people looking to buy finished quilts.

Katie’s love of family and history are behind some of the quirks at Bay Window Quilt Shop. The paint is worn off the middle of the wooden steps leading to the downstairs level. Customers may wonder about it as they use those stairs, but she keeps it that way because her grandfather was the last one to paint those steps, and she hasn’t had the heart to paint over it. “I wonder how long it will be before they’re painted again?” she said.

The paint store itself reminds her of her grandfather, who started that business. Quilt customers are sometimes surprised to find she knows her way around paint products.

“I can mix paint,” she said. “I can mix paint to match your quilt if you want.”

Her mom retired from Bay Window in 2020. “We worked together for 20 years. It was awesome,” Katie said. “We worked side by side.”

Both her parents — Sarah and Ed Hayden — waited to retire until Katie and Jace’s youngest child, Lola, was in kindergarten, she said.

“My girls definitely help,” she said. “Will they take over (the business)? Maybe someday. I just hope it stays in the family.”

In addition to owning and operating Bay Window Quilt Shop, Katie Hennagir is the executive director of the nonprofit Perham Center for the Arts.

It’s located in the beautiful brick St. Stanislaus Church, which was built in 1922 with gorgeous stained-glass windows, a striking copper steeple and sweeping architectural lines.

When the church closed in 2009, the community wanted to preserve the historic church, so the St. Stanislaus parishioners and the new nonprofit came together to make it happen in 2011.

Katie was not part of the original group that set up the nonprofit, but now serves as executive director, in part to help bring in grant revenue.

There’s a lot going on at the historic building. It is available as a venue for weddings and other events, and Katie said “there’s a Christmas concert we want to do by candlelight, which will be incredible.”

Art classes “have really taken off,” at the art center, particularly a paint-your-own-pottery class. Leaf River Pottery brings pottery to the class, people paint their own pottery, and Leaf River fires the pottery and then gives back the finished work.

There are pottery wheels and a pottery kiln in the basement of the art center, and members who pay a $15 monthly fee can put them to use as members of the Clay Club. “That’s just kicking off,” Katie said in mid-October. “Last month was our first month, so we’re excited about that.” Two volunteers oversee the group meetings, something Katie appreciates.

“I help with the organization, but I need others to take and run with it,” she said.

There are also dance classes held upstairs, where all but a few of the original pews have been removed to provide an open space for activities.

“So I‘m busy, but it’s a good busy,” Katie said. “I’m super proud to be from Perham, there’s a lot of pride in being a fourth-generation business owner. The community is so supportive.”

As a business owner and community volunteer, Katie said “I can see first-hand from both ends how collaborative our community is. Perham is special that way – we have got that in spades.”

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