Bayside Quilt Shop With $120 Quilt Classes: Sew Right

Out in eastern Queens, a quilt shop near me search lands on a storefront that sells machines first and fabric right behind them. Sew Right Sewing Machines, at 223-20 Union Turnpike in Bayside, is a multi-line dealer for BERNINA, bernette, Baby Lock, Brother and Juki with a fabric wall of quilting cottons, a classroom that runs quilt workshops most weeks, and a repair counter. The shop calls itself a sewing community rather than just a store, and the class calendar backs that up.

The front of the shop is the dealer floor. Sew Right carries sewing and embroidery machines across several brands, embroidery-only machines, sergers and the hoops, presser feet, stabilizers and needles that go with them. Laurastar pressing systems sit nearby, and the shop sells Classic Sewing Furniture, which it describes as fine sewing machine furniture custom built in America, for anyone setting up a permanent quilting corner at home.

Behind the machines is the part quilters come for. The fabric collection on the shop's website lists Confetti Cotton solids at $9.49 in more than two dozen colors, from barn red and pumpkin to eggplant, iron and licorice. Seasonal prints such as Harvest on the Prairie and Brave Your Way are listed at $13.30, and organic ColorPlay canvas is $13.00 for tote and bag projects.

Finishing supplies are where a neighborhood dealer earns its keep. The Dear Sweethearts 107/108-inch wide back is listed at $21.00, which saves seaming a backing for a full-size quilt. A Spoonful of Sugar fat-quarter bundle of 25 pieces is $85.00, and the Lori Holt Zippy Bags panel is $25.00 for a quick weekend project. There is also a kit club for people who would rather have someone else coordinate the fabric.

The classroom is where Sew Right stands apart from the Manhattan fabric stores. This fall the shop listed Square on Square Quilt, a two-session beginner class on October 8 and 22 at $120 that uses fat quarters for an easy pieced design, with the center square fabrics provided. It also listed Scrappy Trips Around the World on October 16 and 30, also $120, a strip-piecing class taught with permission from a Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville tutorial.

For quilters past the basics, Free Form Quilts: Cut Loose and Create is a six-hour session at $180, inspired by Rayna Gillman's ruler-free style, where you freehand cut straight and curved strips and square up only at the end. The X's and O's Quilt class runs three hours for $90 and teaches several ways to make half-square triangles. Shorter projects include Curved Festive Placemats at $120 and a Folding Star Trivet at $60.

Read the fine print before you book. Several quilt classes state that they begin at exactly 10:30 am and ask students to arrive on time, and most require you to bring a working sewing machine, a rotary cutter, a mat and 6 by 24 and 6 by 12 inch rulers. Material lists are specific, down to six fat quarters or one jelly roll for the Trip Around the World blocks, so shopping the fabric wall before class is part of the plan.

The Free Form class is also a stash-buster. Its material list asks for leftover fabric strips and larger scraps from earlier projects, a mix of prints and solids in light, medium and dark values, and hand-dyed fabrics if you have them. A ruler only comes out to square up the finished blocks, which makes it a welcome change for quilters who have spent years matching every seam.

Not every visit needs a teacher. Open Sew Studio is a five-hour unguided session for $20 where you bring whatever you are working on and sew in the studio alongside other sewists, and machines are available to rent if yours is too heavy to haul. For a quilter with half-finished tops in a closet, it is the cheapest way to get a big table and good light for an afternoon.

If you just bought a machine, or inherited one, the 1:1 Tailored Machine Training session is $75 and covers the features you actually use. The shop also offers garment classes with instructors such as Catherine Petrosino and Heidi Loftus, plus open embroidery and serger classes, so a quilter can branch into other techniques without changing shops. Repair requests start from the repairs page on the shop's website.

Sew Right is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 am to 6 pm and Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm, and closed on Sunday and Monday. Many quilt classes run in the late morning, so weekday afternoons are a good window for unhurried fabric browsing or a long conversation about which machine suits your quilting.

Most customers arrive by car, and the stretch of Union Turnpike around the shop is a low-rise commercial strip rather than a dense shopping district. By transit, the Q46 bus runs along Union Turnpike through this part of Queens, which connects to the subway at Kew Gardens.

Make a day of the trip with the green spaces that ring this corner of Queens. Alley Pond Park, one of the largest parks in the borough, spreads across the area to the east and north with wooded trails and wetlands, and Cunningham Park lies to the west along Union Turnpike with its own forest paths and ball fields. Either one is a good place to stretch your legs after a six-hour class.

Farther east, the Queens County Farm Museum, at 73-50 Little Neck Parkway in Floral Park, preserves a historic working farm with fields, greenhouses and farm animals inside city limits. Up on the north edge of Alley Pond Park, the Alley Pond Environmental Center, at 228-06 Northern Boulevard in Douglaston, runs nature programs beside the wetlands. For quilters who love traditional patterns, either stop is a fitting way to end the afternoon.

Sew Right Sewing Machines is at 223-20 Union Turnpike, Bayside, NY 11364. Hours: Tuesday to Friday 10 am to 6 pm, Saturday 10 am to 5 pm, closed Sunday and Monday.

Classes are booked through the shop's website and listed with the number of sessions, duration and materials. Bring your own machine unless the listing says otherwise, arrive a few minutes before the 10:30 am starts, and shop for your fat quarters ahead of class day.