Area Needlecraft Community Loses an Icon

Walking into Inez's Stitchery on Howard Avenue, a second-floor yarn and needlecraft shop in Kensington, is like going through a time warp. Lining the entryway are glass cabinets displaying handmade lace gloves circa 1960, knitting patterns from the 1970s and hand-crocheted Disney characters including Winnie the Pooh and Tigger.

The musty smell, reminiscent of an old attic, gets heavier as one creeps up the rickety stairway. But upon entering the store, customers are drawn to the huge selection of raw materials sold for most any hand craft, from the beginner to the most discerning artisan.

Crochet kits, knitting needles and crewel embroidery materials all hang from off-white pegged walls. Yarns in every color and texture fill the backroom, stacked to the ceiling in wood crates and cardboard boxes. A glass counter sits in the middle of the store, with an old cash register surrounded by piles of old paper and hand-written receipts.

But all of this gives the overcrowded store a certain charm that has kept a loyal customer base flocking through its doors since it opened more than 40 years ago.

The late owner, Inez Fowler, 89, who died March 23 at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring after suffering a stroke in the store, was a Kensington fixture, working five days a week in her shop on Kensington's "Antique Row" until her death. She was well known throughout the tight-knit local needlecraft community.

"She was an institution. Everybody in the knitting and crocheting world from Alexandria to Baltimore knew Inez and had been to her store," said Jennifer Woods, a salesperson and knitting teacher at A Tangled Skein, a yarn store in Hyattsville.

While the store was known for selling specific needlecraft items that could not be found elsewhere -- a small lace bead needle, for example -- and for having everything a crafter could need under one roof, a rarity in the industry, Mrs. Fowler was known for her prickly personality.

She had a reputation for being "not a warm and fuzzy person," Woods said.

According to Woods, Mrs. Fowler once kicked two women out of her store because she thought they were spying for another business.

But her son, Mike Fowler, who now owns half the store with his sister, Pat, thinks her manner attributed to the charm and reputation of her business, one of the only needlecraft stores in the area to remain open for more than 15 years, despite still not having a Web site or current electronic bookkeeping system.

"She was very willful, some would say headstrong," he said. "To her customers she wasn't rude but she could be. They kind of liked her abrupt manner."

Mrs. Fowler, a native of New Orleans and daughter of parents affected by the Depression, started working in needlecrafts when she moved to the Washington area in the mid-1950s.

She taught hook and braided rug crafting through an adult education program run by Montgomery County. Later she began selling supplies to her students out of her car, and by the early 1960s, decided she could turn it into a more commercial business. She opened her first store on Armory Avenue, around the corner from the current location, where she had been since the late 1960s.

She also had a discerning eye for color, according to her grandson, Brett Fowler, now the store's manager, and was happy to assist customers with projects.

"She had an eye for contrast and what would work with different materials," he said.

She was a creature of habit, driving the same car since 1984, a Honda Civic with 56,000 miles. She also lived by her craft. In her store, she posted a sign with a quote that she would repeat and adhere to.

"The wages of sin are not doing your gages," it said, referring to needle stitches.