Little Buckaroos: fabric, notions for lads and lasses

Sewing enthusiasts with wee ones in their lives are likely to make Little Buckaroos Fabric & Quilts a regular stop for creative inspiration and supplies. Lined with bolts of brightly colored, playfully patterned nursery fabrics, the recently opened store on Hood Avenue offers everything one needs to fashion adorable one-of-a-kind items for children.

Says owner Lee Cooley, "Everyone that comes through the door says, 'Oh this is just so darling!'

"There are a lot of grandmothers out there, and that was really my target market. Also young moms, just learning to sew, who want to make clothes for their child or decorate a bedroom."

In addition to fabric, Cooley carries a selection of charming novelty buttons - cowboy boots, ice cream cones and princesses are some of the choices - as well as cotton onesies, personalized on site with machine-embroidered embellishments.

She is excited about networking with local quilters, and she will consider well-made, youth-sized quilts for consignment.

Little Buckaroos also proudly features locally designed fabric by Robin Mynatt, and quilt patterns by Mary Smith, "The Quiltsmith," as Lee plans an ongoing effort to "showcase the local talent that's here.

"It's good for the community in the long run, especially in a small town."

Her own interest in quilting arose when she became a grandparent.

"I'm just a wanna-be quilter, but I've sewn on an electric machine since I was five," she says. "I can remember my great-grandmother and her sisters sitting around one of those (retractable) quilting frames that you pull down from the ceiling, hand-quilting. And they wanted me to sit down and quilt, and I wanted to be outside with the boys playing ball."

But Cooley made most of her own clothes while growing up in Tucson, Arizona, when it was still "a little cow town."

"Once I made a dress for the school dance," she remembers, "but I had too much homework on Thursday to finish it. I told my dad to stall my date while I sewed the last buttons on."

Both Lee and her husband, Mike Cooley, grew up among ranching families and rodeos. Mike hails from a cattle ranch in Eastern Oregon.

Lee competed at barrel-racing, her dad at calf-roping.

"So the Western buckaroo theme came easily to me, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to be in Sisters," she says.

Surprisingly, this crafty grandmother did heavy construction for a number of years on highways, bridges and dams while she was a young mother in Arizona.

"It wasn't that I was into women's lib so much; I just needed a job with good wages and benefits," she says. "And I would sew at night, making clothing for myself and my three little girls. Course they would always gripe that it all matched."

Lee moved to Bend in the 1980s and employed her creative side, working as a floral designer for many years.

Now with two grandsons attending Sisters Christian Academy, she is happy to find a niche in a community that reminds her a little bit of Tucson of old.

"I've always loved color and fabric, and I've always loved Sisters because of the Western feel of the town," she says.