The Quilted Bear has joined thousands of stores across North America in participating in this year's Row by Row Experience. The initiative started in New York four years ago and expanded to include all of the United States and Canada this year. Row By Row Experience challenges quilters to obtain patterns from different stores and use them to create a quilt. Each participating store is giving away a different free pattern for a row in a quilt.
The first participant to come back to the store with a completed quilt using at least eight different rows from eight different stores is deemed the winner, with a bonus prize for using that store's row in the quilt. The Quilted Bear owner Carol Tario Bobick said Row by Row started on Father's Day and within two hours the store had already seen 33 customers come through the doors looking for the pattern. The event runs until Sept. 8 and Tario Bobick said the store has already had at least 700 people come through the doors, many of whom do not live in Ladner. With only nine quilting stores in the Lower Mainland, local participants must travel around the region to get the patterns.
"It's been a huge success," she said Since the winner is determined by whoever returns to the store first with a completed quilt, the winner for The Quilted Bear has already been determined. Richmond's Debbie Fontaine was the first to return with her quilt. She won 25 fat quarters of fabric - a fat quarter is a quarter of a yard - and a $50 gift certificate for the store.
