City Made Quilts: Excelsior Quilt Shop, $3.50 Quarter Yards

City Made Quilts sells quilting cotton by the quarter yard, starting at $3.50, from a storefront at 1021 Geneva Avenue in the Excelsior, between Paris and Lisbon streets. It is a dedicated quilt shop in San Francisco proper, which is rarer than it sounds: owner Sarah Cain told Mission Local the city had plenty of garment fabric stores but nothing for quilts. The doors open Wednesday through Sunday, so plan around a closed Monday and Tuesday.

Sarah Cain moved to San Francisco from Modesto in 2013 and spent more than a decade designing quilts about the city before opening this shop in August 2026. Her patterns are named for places: the Haight pattern borrows the stacked trim of Victorian facades, Lombard uses circles and zigzags for the crooked street, and a Hunters Point design takes its colors from a mural at Third Street and Hudson Avenue.

The storefront itself came out of a city grant program meant to fill empty commercial spaces; Cain received $50,000 after applying, as she put it, on a whim. She previously ran her pattern business from home and worked for about 20 years as a licensed marriage and family therapist, which explains the unhurried way she talks customers through color choices at the cutting table.

Standard 44-inch quilting cottons are cut in continuous quarter-yard steps, so a full yard of Ruby Star Society Starry or a Riley Blake Secret Garden print costs $14. Widebacks at 108 inches, useful for backing a throw in one piece, are $6.50 per quarter yard. The shelves lean modern: Ruby Star Society, Cotton and Steel prints by Hitomi Osumi, Figo, Free Spirit and Cloud9.

The most San Francisco purchase is a kit built around Cain's own designs. The Haight Quilt Kit is $98 and bundles the printed pattern with 1 yard of Starry in Rosebud, 1 1/3 yards in Papaya, 1 1/4 yards in Warm Red and 3 yards in Dusk. The Ingleside pattern, $12 on paper, is drawn from the houses climbing the hills of her own neighborhood.

English paper piecing gets its own corner. Packs of 100 one-inch hexagon papers are $4.75, acrylic hexagon templates start at $7.25, and Bohin sashiko needles are $4.50, so a hand-sewing project for the bus ride home costs less than lunch. For a quick zipper project, the Patchwork Zippie Kit in a rainbow colorway is $35 and uses Cain's own pouch pattern from her Sarah Jean Makes line.

Precuts sit near the register: a Ruby Star Society charm pack is $14, a layer cake or jelly roll is $52, and a Mystery Fat Quarter is $4 for an 18 by 21 inch surprise. Skip the novelty stickers and linocut prints if you came for a project; the money goes further on a half-yard of a wideback you cannot find elsewhere in the city.

Open Sew on selected Saturdays costs $25 and gives you the classroom from 10 am to 3 pm with work tables, irons, cutting mats and rulers. It is not instruction, so bring your own machine and project; upcoming dates include October 24 and November 7, 14 and 21.

Taught sessions are small and fill early. The Patchwork Zippie Class on Sunday, November 8 runs four hours for $100 with materials included, is limited to ages 16 and up, and expects previous sewing experience; a shop machine costs $25 extra. The Folded Star Ornament Workshop on Sunday, November 29 is $60, a good first class for someone who has never pieced a block.

Long-arm finishing is done with Coastside Quilt Studio. Drop your top by 5 pm on Wednesday to make that week's queue and talk through thread and pattern with Cain. Edge-to-edge quilting is $0.035 per square inch with a $50 minimum, and rush service adds $50 for pickup the next Thursday. Backing and batting must be at least 4 inches larger than the top on every side.

Weekday afternoons are the quiet stretch, since doors open at noon from Wednesday to Friday and the room is mostly regulars picking up binding fabric. Saturdays are busier because Open Sew fills the back table, so arrive at 10 am if you want unhurried cutting. Sunday closes early at 3 pm, which catches out people who wander over after brunch.

Online orders can be picked up free at the counter and are usually ready within 48 hours. That is the smart move for a kit or a long bundle cut, because you skip the wait at the cutting table and can spend the visit on the bins of precuts instead. If you arrive on a Monday or Tuesday, Fabrix on Clement Street opens every day for cotton and canvas.

Balboa Park Station, served by BART and the M and J Muni lines, is a short walk west along Geneva Avenue, and Muni buses 8, 43 and 54 stop close to the shop. Across from the station, the restored Geneva Car Barn and Powerhouse is a brick 1901 streetcar building that now hosts youth arts programs; look at the arched windows from the sidewalk.

Continue north into Balboa Park for a loop around the ball fields, or head east to Mission Street, the Excelsior's main corridor of Filipino bakeries, taquerias and Chinese produce stands. A bag of fabric and a box of pan de sal make a fair Sunday morning, and the walk back to the train stays mostly flat.

City Made Quilts is at 1021 Geneva Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94112. Store hours are Wednesday to Friday 12 pm to 6 pm, Saturday and Sunday 10 am to 3 pm, closed Monday and Tuesday. Long-arm payments are due at pickup, and the shop returns large backing scraps unless you say otherwise. Gift cards start at $25, and fabric is cut only in quarter-yard multiples.