Meet the owners
Beckers and Brinkley-Fosdick’s first exposure to quilting was admiring their grandmother’s quilts when they were younger. Fosdick said their parents knew how to quilt too, but that they were part of a generation and a community that sewed for utility rather than a hobby.
Originally from the Central Austin area, the sisters took a quilting class in the early '80s that was enough to pique their interest again. They joined the Austin Area Quilt Guild in 1983 where they met a woman named Kathleen McCrady, a nationally recognized quilter, who taught them more about the ins and outs of quilt making.
“She taught us how to do hand piecing and how to draft patterns and things about the grain of fabric and the grain of thread and so forth,” Beckers said. “So then we were really hooked.”
Beckers and Brinkley-Fosdick had been working corporate jobs in the communications industry and wanted to open a quilt store once they retired. When they found out a 185,000-square-foot Cabela’s was going to open in Buda, they seized the opportunity to open their business there.
They first opened in three rooms on the top floor of The Carrington House then moved to a house on South Austin Street. In 2014, Brinkley-Fosdick’s late husband Mark Brinkley built their current building which is tucked into some trees on Loop Street, across from Buda City Hall. A giant quilt block sign lets customers know they’re in the right spot.
Respecting the craft
Beckers said it's “awe-inspiring” to see how much the store has grown since opening. When they opened, they had 700 bolts of 100% cotton fabric. Today, the store has over 6,000 bolts of fabric to choose from.
“It's rare that someone will come in with a project and not be able to find something that will work to help them finish it, whether it's another piece for doing blocks, or it's an inner border to go with what they already chose as a border and their piece’s center or a backing,” Beckers said.
The store also participates in shop hops, events where quilt stores gather to offer customers their unique inventories in one place.
B&B Quilting offers various classes and programs for different experience levels, such as a $5 block program that gradually challenges beginner quilters. Part of the reason they opened a brick-and-mortar quilt store rather than an online store was for the personal approach.
“We had been nurtured through our quilting,” Brinkley-Fosdick said. “We had a lot of caring people through the Austin Area Quilt Guild, especially Kathleen McCrady, who showed us exactly how to do it and was patient while we learned, and that's what we wanted to pass on. That personal, social aspect to quilting and actually having that one-on-one connection sometimes.”
What else
Beckers and Brinkley-Fosdick said they are grateful for the years of community support for B&B Quilting. They said a lot of their customers are their friends because they have shopped there for so long and they know everyone by name.
“The joy in this really is the people,” Beckers said. “Talking to people, and helping people and getting to know people.”
- 410 E. Loop St., Buda
- www.bbquilting.com
