By Mark Hansel
NKyTribune Managing Editor
It has been more than 20 years since Linda Whittenburg went from educating public school students about art to teaching the art of quilting and selling supplies.
Cabin Arts, which opened in 1992, is located on Jefferson Street in Burlington, in a log cabin restored by Whittenburg and her husband Dan.
Dan Whittenburg owns Superior Imports, located just behind the cabin, and the couple bought the lot and got the building as a throw in. The owner indicated it might be log but wasn’t sure.
“I was ready to make a change and this property became available,” Whittenburg said. “We were planning to tear it down and use it for additional parking or whatever he needed. We pulled the drywall off and found that it was log.”
The couple then had to decide it they wanted to commit the time, effort and money to restore the building.
Linda Whittenburg spent 12 years teaching art at Simon Kenton High School and another three at the School for the Creative and Performing Arts in Cincinnati.
While she loved her work, Whittenburg had become disillusioned about the direction of public education, so the timing was right for a career change.
“I enjoyed the actual teaching but I really began to dislike all of the other stuff that went with it,” Whittenburg said. “There was a lot of paperwork details just to be able to teach for a few hours.”
Whittenburg decided she would begin a transition that would allow her to dedicate the next phase of her life to quilting and teaching the craft to others.
She has not looked back.
For the next six months the Whittenburgs spent every night and every weekend working to get the building ready for a December opening to coincide with the Burlington Hometown Christmas Week.
“We opened in the first week of December and our goal was to just making it habitable… it was, but just barely,” she said.
Initially, Whittenburg had a partner who was also teaching full-time. During the week they continued to work on the building and would clean it up enough to open on weekends.
“I decided that summer I was having so much fun working in the shop that I didn’t want to go back to teaching, so I didn’t,” Whittenburg said.
They continued to work on the building, for the next two years, replacing the chimney and fireplace and Whittenburg bought her partner out.
Whittenburg learned the art of quilting from her mother, Ruth Bruce, who taught her and two sister’s how to sew as children.
“For us it was just part of growing up and we loved it, it wasn’t a chore” Whittenburg said. “We sewed clothes for our dolls and eventually learned to make our own clothes.”
That experience paid off as Whittenburg put herself through college making alterations and repairs in what was then a Shillito’s store.
After graduating from Northern Kentucky University, Whittenburg began teaching in 1979 and thought she was done with sewing.
“After doing alterations for all those years, I was really sick of it and didn’t care if I ever saw another garment,” she said.
Her passion was rekindled, however, when her sister Neda Wilmhoff convinced her to help make a quilt for her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary in 1990.
Wilmhoff introduced her to some of the innovations in quilting that had been developed over the years, and that was all it took.
“I really enjoyed it and went out and bought fabric for another quilt and I’ve gone great guns since then.” Whittenburg said. “I just kept quilting even though I didn’t have many supplies.”
Then fate, in the form of a 1860s era log cabin, intervened and Cabin Arts was born.
At first, because Whittenburg had invested so much on renovations, the business was a consignment shop focused on local crafts and quilts. At its peak, Cabin Arts had about 60 consignors, but the goal was always to phase that out, because it is difficult to make a profit.
“Some people jump in and invest hundreds of thousands of dollars but I’ve just kind of eased into it gradually because for one thing, I didn’t have that kind of money,” Whittenburg said. “Now we’ve got a lot of fabric and something of a reputation and we’ve outlasted a lot of other shops.”
Whittenburg’s initial purchase was 25 bolts of fabric in 1996. She now has more than 5,000.
The log cabin, now known as the Hogan House, is on the National Register of Historic Places and has a companion building that was constructed 15 years ago.
While the new building does not have the historical significance of the other structure, the Whittenburgs went to great lengths to recreate an authentic log cabin.
Except for the basement, Dan Whittenburg built the cabin pretty much by himself using authentic tools.
“It’s mostly old logs and some of them are dated 1781,” Linda Whittenburg said. “It’s from a corn crib where the boys probably used to sit out back and sneak a smoke and carved their initials and the date into the logs.”
Whittenburg also offers classes at Cabin Arts for everyone from beginners to longtimers and estimates she has had more than 5,500 participants over the years.
“They think it’s going to be hard and we try to explain to them it’s so much simpler than making clothes,” Whittenburg said. “All you have to do is put a quarter-inch seam on everything and you don’t have to put in sleeves and it doesn’t have to fit.”
Of course, many of those students have become customers, which has helped the business flourish.
In 2004, Melinda Nau was looking for a new hobby and a friend suggested she try quilting.
“The next thing I knew, we were at Cabin Arts and I’m completing my first quilt,” Nau said. “Linda and her co-workers have introduced me to an exciting hobby (and) many new friends … in a fun, comfortable and inviting environment to shop and create. That might explain why they are successfully celebrating 23 years in business.”
Whittenburg said cultivating relationships with long-term customers is the most gratifying part of the business for her.
“It’s really a pleasure to make lifelong friends and some of the women and men who come in here now have become very close to me.”
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If you go:
Cabin Arts Quilt Shop
5878 Jefferson St.
Burlington, KY. 41005
859/586-8021