Fabric Warehouse occupies a squat one-story building with a hunter green roof and a bright red door. Once inside, customers wander the meandering spaces that seem to extend beyond what the building’s footprint would allow.
That’s not unlike the business itself, which has changed through decades of family ownership, at 3030 Florida Ave., in Lakeland, with one enduring goal: to foster a community, one stitch at a time.
Fabric Warehouse offers more than 10,000 bolts of fabric and other sewing supplies, but it’s still more than that — a meeting space, for groups such as Ladies of the Lakes and Polk County Crossroads Stitchers, a place for sewing and craft classes and summer camps for kids, and a sewing machine sales and repair facility.
“If you sew at a young age, throughout your life you’ll come back to it,” says Rebecca Garland, Fabric Warehouse’s owner.
From grocer to notions: The land at the corner of North Florida Avenue and East Griffin Road has been in Garland’s family since the 1920s. Her great-great uncle first built Lakeview Grocery there. Eventually, he sold the land to her maternal grandfather.
Her father, William H. Gumtow, bought the property in 1951 and he and his buddies built the building for Dody’s Fabrics, opened by Dody Gumtow, Garland’s mother, in 1958. Garland was around 7 then. She’s worked in the family business all her life.
Over the years it evolved, first into Gumtow’s Sewing Notions, which added wholesale fabric and supplies. Next it became Butterfly of Florida, focusing on women’s beachwear.
In the late 1970s, it became Fabric Warehouse. (In 1985, it also became a Viking sewing machine dealer.)
It’s healing: Gumtow and Garland “never ran their business for themselves,” says Garland’s stepdaughter, Allyson Ochodnicky. “They always ran their business to just help people. They would take a personal loss if it helped a customer.”
The thing about her trade, Garland says, is that when the economy is bad, “you can sew to save money, you can sew to make money...it’s a recession-proof business.”
Ochodnicky, who is 35, began working in the store at 15. She has been working full-time at Fabric Warehouse for the past eight years and is now its manager. Her son, Benny, spent the first year of his life coming to work with her.
“I don’t want to be in any other industry,” she says. “I’m surrounded by mothers and grandmothers … it’s kind of healing for me.”
Loving clientele: Many Fabric Warehouse customers have been shopping at the store for years. “We have customers that come three, four, five days a week just to chitchat, have something to do,” Ochodnicky says.
Since Jo-Ann fabric and craft stores closed, in May 2025, Ochodnicky says they’ve also seen a lot of new faces at Fabric Warehouse. People have told her, “I’ve been driving past you for 60 years and I never knew what this place was.”
When snowbird customers leave for the season, Garland says they stay connected with the store through videos that Ochodnicky makes for social media.
“My customers, they’re very open, giving, loving and honest,” she says. “Most of them don’t make anything for themselves.”
And, Ochodnicky says, “If you needed to learn anything about sewing, someone here has knowledge of it. … These ladies have knowledge that you can’t find on YouTube. It’s not written in a book.”
Anna Toms is a reporter for LkldNow, a nonprofit newsroom providing independent local news for Lakeland. Read at LkldNow.com.
