Photo courtesy of Artistic Artifacts
Batik fabrics at Artistic Artifacts.
MONEY Magazine recently ranked Alexandria as its top travel destination in the country. Now, the experts behind the Better Homes & Gardens empire are taking notice of Alexandria, too.
After keeping a close watch on Alexandria’s Artistic Artifacts shop for years, Better Homes & Gardens’ Quilt Sampler magazine recently named it to the short list of “Top Shops” in the nation. A special issue with lengthy features on the handful of shops that made the list will hit newsstands in May.
Shop founder and owner Judy Gula says the attention since being informed they had made this year’s “Top Shops” issue has been overwhelming and very flattering.
“I’ve been told I’ve won the equivalent of an Oscar in the quilting industry,” she said with a laugh. “I say, that’s good! I love the Oscars!”
The team at Artistic Artifacts in Alexandria’s West End is overjoyed — they’ve dreamed of being named to the prestigious list for years.
Gula said the “Top Shops” issue of the magazine chose just 10 shops from all across the country—out of more than 3,000 they considered—to feature in the spring/summer 2018 issue, and she has been told the magazine will devote a full eight to 10 pages to anything and everything Artistic Artifacts. The magazine’s staff also invited Gula and her team to design an exclusive quilt pattern to run in the issue.
“They sent out a photographer and a stylist to the shop recently and took tons of photos,” Gula said. “I’m just so excited. We’ve applied for the issue for the past couple of years, and you’re up against so much competition, so it’s really neat to be chosen.”
Photo courtesy of Artistic Artifacts
Judy Gula
A Lifetime Love of All Things Fiber
Artistic Artifacts, at 4750 Eisenhower Ave., is celebrating its sixth anniversary in March. March happens to be International Quilting Month.
The shop is located in the building that once housed Electrodyne, an automotive supply business owned by Gula’s family members.
Artistic Artifacts is the culmination of a lifetime of dedication to fiber arts, textiles and quilting. Gula first found her love of fiber arts in middle school, when she began weaving, spinning and dying. She went on to study fashion design and textiles in college at Radford University, as well as business marketing, all of which set her up to be a successful owner of her dream shop.
Gula is also a highly sought-after lecturer who travels to quilting conventions and conferences across the country, and often serves as a guest speaker for quilting and fiber art groups.
In addition, her blog, which is featured on the shop’s website, was recently named one of Feedspot’s “Top 100 Quilting Blogs to Follow.”
Not Your Average Quilting Shop
When Gula started her business, she wanted to merge her love of many types of art and crafting into one shop. For that reason, Artistic Artifacts is much more than the average quilting shop.
“We have a very different product base, including a lot of fair-trade items,” she says. “We carry some already-made gift-type items, but most of what we carry are supplies.”
Artistic Artifacts sells all manner of quilting supplies, including a variety of fabrics, needles and threads, and serves as an authorized dealer of Bernina brand sewing machines, which they service as well. However, the shop also serves as a haven of sorts to many types of art, including paper arts, fiber arts, paints, stencils, stamps and much more.
One aspect of the shop that truly sets it apart are its Batik fabrics and textiles. These are fair trade, handpainted items imported directly from Indonesia, which can make for truly unique “art quilts,” which are quilts designed to hang on walls like pieces of fine art, rather than as a type of blanket or bed décor. Many of the pieces in the shop’s Batik collections are handcrafted exclusively for Artistic Artifacts.
Photo courtesy of Artistic Artifacts
An art quilt by Judy Gula with hand-drawn Batik Tambal design.
“We’re very much about artists helping artists. The crafts and products we sell help other crafts and artists from around the world,” Gula explains. “So we’re different from many quilt shops you’ll see across America.”
One of the shop’s exclusive Batik Tambal pieces serves as the centerpiece of the special quilt Gula designed for Quilt Sampler magazine. To celebrate the new pattern, Gula says the shop is putting together kits that include the piece, which Gula describes as having a handpainted floral design, along with many of the other supplies needed to make her exclusive art quilt, which is offered in four different sizes.
Artistic Artifacts is also the only shop on the east coast—and one of only five in the world—that is an approved Wonderfil dealer and “Threaducation Center.” Wonderfil is a popular, high-quality brand of thread, and the shop is authorized to sell the company’s products, as well as teach classes on the many types of fiber art projects that can be made from it.
In addition to Wonderfil classes, Artistic Artifacts has a robust calendar of classes in everything from quilting to handstitching, fabric embellishment, working with leather, printing and dying, and even assembling art from found objects.
“We are truly a community of artists. And we’re also very community-oriented,” she said of their home in Alexandria and the greater area as a whole.
“Quilters are very giving people. It doesn’t matter where you come from in the world, quilters are a community,” she said, describing how local artists frequently gather at the shop to organize charitable projects, such as making quilts for victims of natural disasters around the world, as well as for soldiers and veterans.
The shop also plays hosts to many social groups for quilters and other types of artists.
“We’re very lucky. We have an incredible art population in Alexandria. The city is very supportive of creative industry.”
Upcoming Celebrations
As March is International Quilting Month, the shop is featuring deals and discounts all month, and will be teaming up to host an event with the Quilt Alliance this Saturday, March 17. People are encouraged to bring in quilts that have “a story behind them” for a special show-and-tell of sorts, and members of Quilt Alliance will help document their unique stories.
In addition, locals should look out for details soon on a special celebration around the time the Quilt Sampler’s “Top Shops” issue comes out in May.
