KINGSTON — Jacque Norad and Connie Simila hope to have Kingston in stitches by this fall.

Not only with the witty banter that takes place between the two friends but also with quilting classes, bright fabrics and needlework.

The two award-winning quilters opened the Kingston Quilt Shop July 2 after searching several months for a storefront but couldn’t find anything affordable in Central or South Kitsap near their residences in Bremerton.

But as Norad was passing through Kingston to the ferry earlier this spring, she saw the “For Lease” sign in the window of the former Kingston Nautical Supply shop and the two pinned down the opportunity. Since then, it’s been nothing but a positive experience, especially for running their first retail business together.

“We love people,” Simila said.

“And the community has been awesome,” Norad added. “The cool thing is, men will come in and they don’t have a wife with them and they say, ‘Oh, wow, this town needed this.’”

And word about their new shop has spread rapidly, but that’s not surprising.

“Nobody talks like quilters,” Simila said. “We’re talkers. The word has spread.”

The spacious shop offers the quilting basics and more — about 1,000 bolts of fabric, plus threads, notions and books. They have also discovered that residents in the area enjoy needlework, such as knitting and crocheting, so they provide materials for those activities as well.

The two encourage artistic quilting, adding such items as beads and ribbons.

“There are all kinds of things you can do with art quilts,” Simila said.

“We want to appeal to young people that (quilting is) not just block sewing,” Norad added.

Norad has been quilting for 20 years, and operated her own quilting business, The Thread Connection, for seven years just prior to opening Kingston Quilt Shop. Simila is a textile artist, often working with fabrics and notions in colorful ways but it wasn’t until 2003 that she started quilting. Norad had asked Simila to help her with the colors of a piece that Norad was doing for the Kitsap Literacy Council. That’s when Simila discovered how quilting can have an artistic flair. So in addition to her other work, she also creates artistic quilts and Norad continues with her traditional quilts, while providing the long arm services in the shop.

The ladies hope to share what they know through classes they plan to start this fall as they have had a lot of beginning quilters come in and ask questions.

“I think people think it’s hard but it’s not,” Norad said.

Most quilt shop owners stock fabrics that appeal to them but they also stock others to create a variety. Norad and Simila both like batiks and Asian patterned-material, but they also plan to include more calicos.

“Every quilt shop has their own type of things,” Simila said.

Customers will ask for certain name brands of material, rather than a certain pattern, but the ladies feel they provide an extensive variety, they said.

“They know what they like,” Norad said. “We buy what we like. If it’s expensive, it’s expensive. If it’s not, it’s not, but it’s all good quality fabric.”