Creating & Serving Our Sewing Community for Over 55 Years

History of Hi Fashion Sewing Machines & Quilts Shop 

The company was started in November 1965 under the name of Hi Fashion Discount Center Inc. Don and Arlene Vogel teamed up to retail fashion clothing at significantly reduced prices, and they acquired products from overruns and previous year's garments. The two would travel to New York, Dallas, and LA to find goods to sell. Don had retail experience with Wards for over 25 years. Arlene was a sewist; she could see a dress in a window and sew it up the next day. On one trip in Dallas, she saw yards and yards of designer cuts of fabric and asked to buy it in bulk, and they sold like hotcakes. By the mid-70s, double-knit polyester material was popular, and we sold truckloads of it. We had three locations in Grand Junction at that time and a warehouse, so the day Jeff got his driver's license, he became the delivery guy. Don loved a bargain; manufacturers would offer him close-out deals. One time he bought 50,000 zippers and 5,000 pounds of buttons. After many years of trying to sell or give them away, we took a trailer load to the landfill. Clothing was phased out, and we sold nothing but fabrics in 1993; the land was purchased, and a brand new 18,000-square-foot building was built. We were a fabric Mecca with bridal to upholstery materials. Sewing machines were added in 2006, BERNINA, Handi Quilter, Baby Lock, and Janome, and we soon became an award-winning dealer. In 2012 the shop was downsized to 3,000 square feet highlighting quilting cotton and sewing machines. Fewer staffing requirements and higher ticket items made the company viable again.

Get to Know Our Owner - Jeff Vogel

At six years old, Jeff's mother, Arlene, put a seam ripper in his left hand and showed him how to remove labels from ski jackets so they could sell them at Hi Fashion Discount Center in 1965—no child labor laws in a family business. Jeff grew up watching his mom sew everything from curtains for the house to most of the clothing for his older sisters. Sewing and sewing machines have been in his life ever since he can remember. 

Breaking needles is Jeff's specialty, and he has tried sewing almost everything type of fabric on their household Bernina. Outside chairs, tents, sleeping bags, backpacks, and even car seat covers for his Firebird. Since then, he has learned the importance of matching the right needle for the job. 

In 1980 he graduated from Mesa College with an accounting degree and worked for a local branch of a national accounting firm. Soon after, his father became very sick, and Arlene needed help with the family fabric business. So, in 1984 Jeff started at Hi Fashion Fabrics with his mother as his mentor. The company expanded to the Patterson Road location in 1993, selling Bridal to Upholstery fabrics with over 10,000 bolts of quilting cotton. 

Sewing machine sales and service were introduced in 2006, which satisfied Jeff's mechanical instinct and Mr. Fix-it's side. In 2012 he downsized the big store to the present location to concentrate on quilting cotton, classes, and sewing machine sales. 

He loves to teach machine owners the features of their machines and how to use them to their fullest potential. As a sewing industry student, Jeff has acquired a great deal of knowledge about fabric, threads, needles, and machine mechanics. 

During the Covid outbreak, Jeff started a YOUTUBE channel called Bernina Jeff in an effort to help owners deal with troubleshooting since so many dealers were closed. It was a HIT! Now over 35,000 subscribers and 150 videos, he helps sewists all over the world and sells specialty gadgets and oil on BERNINA-Jeff.myshopify.com