Evart Main Street is at Juneberry Cottage

I have wanted to own a fabric store ever since I was in middle school. I’ve always liked fabric and natural fibers, and I come from an entrepreneurial family. My grandparents came from Germany and started a business they owned until they retired. My parents owned a business. My husband and I started a business. Then, about 10 years ago, he said, 'If you want to open a fabric store, you need to do it.'

And in the spring of 2014, I opened Juneberry Cottage.

When I was working on opening the store and couldn’t decide on a name, my kids said, ‘Mom, remember when…?’ They reminded me that when we had gone on a camping trip in the Upper Peninsula, we saw a juneberry tree and I said, ‘If I ever have a store, I’m going to call it “Juneberry”, and that’s how the name came to be.

I love creating and there are so many possibilities when you’re sewing. You can design something completely on your own, or you can purchase a pattern that's already been designed, but you still have the option to make it your own depending on the fabrics you choose, the embellishments, the type of stitches you use, and the colors. There are so many variations.

I enjoy all aspects of sewing. I like looking at patterns, cutting, and the sewing process. I love that it makes you slow down. If you're feeling anxious and angry, you have to slow down, or you’re going to make mistakes, so the whole process is calming to me. And then having the finished product is satisfying.

I have to call Evart ‘home’ because until I moved here, I never lived anywhere longer than three years, on average. We moved here in 1995, so this is home. I have a lot of good connections here, and there's a sewing and quilting community here, so I thought I could make Juneberry work here, and I have. It’s been a good community to start a business in. 

When I first opened, there were not that many retail businesses on Main Street, but since I've opened, 14 new businesses have opened and are still here. Sometimes it may feel like not that much has changed, but it has. It’s neat to see that.

– June-Marie Essner, Owner of Juneberry Cottage, Evart

#juneberrycottage #EvartMi #EvartMainStreet #DowntownEvart #MiMainStreet #MainStreetStories #MEDC #MiBusiness #MiDowntown #PureMichigan