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A
Pink Door with a crystal knob and the words “Furever
Friends Quilt Shop” welcomes customers to our cheerful
shop owned and operated by us, a husband and wife team, Don
& Nola Aman, in Hillsboro, Oregon.
There’s a story behind the pink door. At our previous
smaller location, we had our shop door painted Pink because
the road was so busy that everyone
could see it better. So, when we moved our business to our
larger location, our loyal
customers teasingly said they couldn’t find us because
we didn’t have a Pink Door. That’s when Don went
to the local Home Depot and bought a door, painted it Hot
Pink and turned it into our sign. Today this trademark door
stands next to the double glass entrance doors, at the top
of the wheelchair ramp.
We have operated “Furever Friends” since 1988. It
started out as a
t-shirt and sweatshirt screen-printing and applique business
that complimented our seasonal wedding cake business. I found
I had lots of leftover scraps
and heard that the local Women’s shelter needed quilts,
so I started to watch PBS
and read all the quilt books I could find, and taught myself
how to sew a quilt together. At craft shows I would pass out
brochures and recruit ladies to help
sew the scraps into quilts. Now those ladies are still meeting
the first and third
Tuesday evening of each month and continue to donate up to
200 quilts a year to the
Women’s shelter. (Even “Fons & Porters”
quilt magazine had an article about our
Quilt group.) I got so involved in quilting that people began
to think I had a quilt shop, ordering fabric here and quilt
books from there and teaching others how to make quilts. Don
and I were still busy running our other business. We owned
and operated Custom Cakes-Unique Cookies, a wedding and party
supply shop in Hillsboro. We even developed a decorated 3
pound chocolate chip cookie that
could be ordered fresh from over 15 choices of flavors and
shapes. We were in the
wedding cake business for so long that we started making wedding
cakes for our customer's children! But after 27 years of cake
decorating and the last 9 of them
operating both businesses, cakes and quilting, we closed Custom
Cakes-Unique
Cookies, so we could concentrate on the quilt business. So
now, many of those who
were our cake customers are now taking quilting classes and
learning how to create beautiful quilts of their own.
Then, a couple years ago, Don became interested in machine
quilting. He looked
into it and eventually bought a quilting machine and after
a lot of practice, he began
accepting quilting jobs. Now, he too is very busy, but he
likes his work because it’s
relaxing, and serves as a creative outlet for him. This is
how “Measure-By-The-Yard"TM
was invented, by Don. |
