Sewing Circles

By: Dan England

2026-01-12NOCOStyle-GingerCat8F7A9534-JohnRobsonPhotography

Mariah Tree brings her knitting everywhere she goes. It’s her calling card. She wants you to ask her about it. She would love to tell you what she’s working on. Most of all, she wants you to believe you can do it too.

Tree is the co-owner of The Twisted Stitch, a shop in downtown Fort Collins that focuses on knitting, sewing, crocheting, embroidering and inclusivity. Knitting is not only a hobby for Tree; it’s where she’s found her community for at least 25 years. She wants that for her store as well.

“I don’t care if someone doesn’t do it exactly right or buy the most expensive thread of yarn,” Tree says. “I want to provide an opportunity for everyone to feel safe with their skill level and interest.”

Tree lives her life that way. She points out, without being asked, that she wants her store to be LBGTQ+ friendly. For her, accessibility is more than a selling tactic. It’s an approach other yarn and knitting stores have also developed in the last few years, and sewing circles across Northern Colorado have cropped up as a result.

Sewing and knitting, or any other kind of needlework, can be intimidating, just like perfecting a good tennis backhand, a solid sourdough loaf or singing outside the shower. Yarn stores need people to feel welcome enough to try what they’re offering, Tree says, or they go out of business. That’s why she opened The Twisted Stitch last year: Her favorite Denver stitching store closed, leaving her without supplies or a community. Her co-owner, Nadia Hare, suggested she start her own business in 2024, and Tree, who had just been laid off from her tech job, leaped at the chance.

“It had been a dream for probably decades, honestly,” Tree says.

Nadia Hare and Mariah Tree with their English Angora rabbit, Princess Pippa LaFloof, at The Twisted Stitch in Fort Collins.

Knitted together

Hare is also a co-owner of The Forge Publick House, a craft beer bar next to what is now The Twisted Stitch, so she had the expertise to give Tree a push into fulfilling that dream. Greeley resident Lesli Anderson also had a dream of starting a knitting hub come to fruition through a gentle push—by her daughter.

Anderson finally opened her own yarn store in her mid-50s after thinking about it from the age of 12. Her daughter, Ilona Cathalan, now 26, started it with her. This month they will celebrate five years together in the Showcase Art Center in downtown Greeley.

“Mom told me about her dream,” Cathalan says, “and I said to her, ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’”

Anderson has loved knitting since she was 9. She learned it from her mother, a hospital administrator who taught it in 4-H and held classes for her students once a week in her office. That gathering place, where she learned how to knit alongside others, inspired her own store decades later.

Anderson and Cathalan offer several ways for their customers, or anyone who loves knitting, to get together. There’s a weekly sit-and-stich (sometimes lovingly called a “stitch-n-bitch”) from 5-7 p.m. on Thursday nights at a large table that’s usually attended by 30 or so regulars. They don’t charge for it, or their “sit ’n spin” on the third Tuesday of every month that focuses on spinning. They enjoy the sessions as much as their customers do.

“It’s really boring just the two of us,” Anderson says, “so we want them to come in. We see some almost every day.”

These kinds of sessions are common in the fiber arts community. The Twisted Stitch offers their own stitching sit-downs at 5 p.m. on Thursdays as well as Sunday spinning sessions. They tend to be casual drop-ins that don’t require registration, like the groups who gather once a week at a bar or poker game.

“We don’t expect weekly attendance,” Cathalan says. “Everything in our shop is based on everyone having lives outside of yarn too…tragically.”

The sessions aren’t designed as deep dives into knitting techniques, although veteran knitters or store owners are there to provide guidance if they need it.

“The only guarantee,” Cathalan says, “is that we’re always laughing.”

In fact, these get-togethers are so common in the knitting world that customers often request them.

“We weren’t even planning to have these groups,” Cathalan says, “but we listened to what our little community was wanting from us.”

The Ginger Cat. Photo by John Robson.

Expert help without the upturned noses

Tree intentionally calls her Thursday group an “open stitch” because she doesn’t want to label it as knitting or sewing. Labeling, she believes, invites gatekeeping.

“When I was in Texas in a group,” Tree says, “they would be critical when someone couldn’t do something.”

She’s been to other knitting stores that label themselves as experts. Sometimes that’s helpful, as some wouldn’t be able to do complicated projects without pro tips. Many store owners love to help their customers with unfinished projects; they can be like a hardware store that helps customers solve problems.

“If you need to get unstuck, pop in,” Cathalan says. “We can help with that. Videos aren’t always helpful.”

But the expert ethos can keep beginners from walking through the door. Tree is willing to lose a customer or two instead of giving off that energy: She even calls herself a “feeder store” that will send potential customers to other places to find a certain kind of yarn or specific advice on a tough project.

“Fiber arts is in danger if we don’t get inclusive,” she says.

Her approach seems to be working. The Twisted Stitch’s knitting table is full on Thursday nights.

“Sometimes we have to bring in extra chairs,” she says.

Many knitting stores offer classes to customers who crave more formal training, generally geared toward beginners. The Twisted Stitch tries to offer at least one beginner-level class on knitting, crocheting and sewing once a month. They charge $15 an hour, and you can sign up on their website.

The Ginger Cat offers classes on the same subjects. Teaching, they say, is one of the joys of owning a knitting store. They offer $25 for a drop-in session.

“If someone is brand new and having a hard time focusing around the noise of a larger group, we can recommend a different time of the week where they can get more one-on-one attention,” Cathalan says.

Store owners also want people to stop in, unannounced, with their projects. Knitting and sewing can be solitary activities, they say, but that’s not their goal. They try to get customers out of the house as often as possible.

That’s why the stores can be a place where everyone knows your name. Cathalan counts some of her customers as her closest friends. They’ve even had customers break down and cry: Some say the store reminds them of their mothers.

“We feel good that there are people who feel safe enough to do that,” Cathalan says.

And there’s still some good knowledge to be had in those groups.

“We have experts willing to teach beginners,” Tree says. “What we’ve found is it just takes a little encouragement.”

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