Thursday, April 25, 2024
Mark and Laurie Cohen feel that God’s plan has always been threaded through their lives, and their somewhat abrupt move to Granbury to open a quilting business was no exception.
The couple’s grand opening for Sew Much Love at 216 W. Pearl St. just off the square was held during the Fourth of July holiday.
They moved here from Austin, where Laurie taught high school students at a private school and Mark owned a furniture and mattress store. Both are in their 50s. Between them, they have five grown kids.
“We had scoped out all of Texas for lake communities to retire in, and Granbury was the only one we found that really had a community around it and so much else to do other than just the lake,” Laurie said.
The Cohens bought a lake house last summer and renovated it to rent out until their retirements, which they thought would be 15 years in the future.
“We just loved Granbury so much – the people, the visitors,” Laurie said. “They are wonderful, kind, generous people. Within a few months we saw this building for sale and my mother said, ‘That would make a perfect quilt store.’”
Laurie’s mother, Barbara Clark, also fell in love with Granbury after staying with the Cohens at their lake house and attending a performance at Granbury Live.
Clark and Laurie’s dad, Ed, a retired Air Force pilot, moved to Granbury in March. Laurie and Mark followed in June.
“They loved it here and decided to move,” Laurie said of her parents. “All we can say is God’s hand is in all of this. They found a house the next week, put theirs on the market a week later, and it sold in a day.”
Laurie and Mark will celebrate their 11th wedding anniversary next month. They met 13 years ago at a Christian singles gathering at an Austin coffee shop.
Over the past year, events in their lives have happened quickly.
“Granbury wasn’t even in our peripheral vision a year ago,” Laurie said. “It’s really been something.”
HANDMADE, WITH HELP
Sew Much Love is a family business that sprang from, well, family. Laurie’s sisters Cherie and Julie love sewing and quilting, and their mother took up the skill at Cherie’s urging after retiring in 2002 from school nursing.
At first, Clark didn’t care much for her daughter’s advice.
“I called her and said, ‘Cherie, I don’t like this at all,’” Clark recounted.
She said she made a second quilt that was a smaller size, and then a third. It was only after finishing the third quilt that Clark realized she enjoyed quilt-making, though she wasn’t particularly wild about using her “regular sewing machine.”
That, she said, “was insanity.”
During a trip with Ed to Des Moines, Iowa, the state where APQS Millie longarm sewing machines are manufactured, Clark went to look at the quilting machines, which range from 10-14 feet long.
Sixty-five at the time, Clark said she felt she was too old to learn how to use the intimidating machine. But when she encountered an 85-year-old woman who used a Millie to make quilts, Clark decided she could do it, too.
The machines can cost around $20,000.
“Then I had to pay for this machine,” Clark said, “so I started quilting for people.”
Clark now helps Laurie and Mark with their new Granbury business, as do a daughter and daughter-in-law of the Cohens.
The Cohens offer longarm services to customers, using their APQS Millie to complete quilts at any stage of the quilting process.
They also offer beginners classes for those who want to learn the craft.
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Laurie said that her mother, now 80, “is where I get my drive from.”
She added, “My father is the same way. At 80, he learned how to do embroidery.”
Mark, too, has learned that skill.
Laurie said that quilt-making “is therapeutic.”
After Mark discovered quilt tops from the 1920s and 1930s in a chest owned by his mother Laurella after her death a couple of years ago from breast cancer, Laurie used the fabric to make 11 quilts in seven weeks for Mark’s family members.
Mark sees the hand of God in the similarities between his mother, who went by the name “Laurie,” and his wife of the same name. His wife’s birthday is September 14; his mother’s was Sept. 13.
And there is another odd coincidence as well. Laurie’s daughter Megan Arce, who lives in San Antonio with her husband Chris, began a floral business about a year after Mark’s mother died and named it “Laurella Blooms.” Only later did she discover that her stepgrandmother had once been a florist.
A seventh-generation Texan, Mark’s roots in the Lone Star State run deep. He said his great-great-great-great-grandfather was Collin McKinney, one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence and for whom the city of McKinney and Collin County were named.
Mark feels it is appropriate that he and his wife now live in a town that claims to be “where Texas history lives.”
AT HOME IN GRANBURY
Sew Much Love customers can purchase fabric, patterns and other items relating to quilting and can also order custom-made quilts. The shop offers home decor and gifts as well.
Details about products and services offered can be found at www.sewmuchlovetexas.com.
Laurie said that customers have been locals and tourists alike.
“We’ve had a really nice welcome from the Granbury community,” she said. “Everyone in Granbury has just been very, very supportive and welcoming.”
kcruz@hcnews.com | 817-573-7066, ext. 258
