Newtown Curtains—

A Business Worthy Of Curtain Calls Relocates To Village Square

By Kaaren Valenta

When she began making custom window treatments in a small bedroom in her Newtown home five years ago, Mary Villa-Lenkeit could only dream that one day she would open her own store. The dream has come true, however, as what started out as a one-person home-based business has evolved into a company that employs eight people and recently relocated into a storefront in the Village Square shopping plaza at 43 South Main Street.

“I wanted to do this from day one, but the question always was would it be an ego decision or a business decision,” she said. “Up to now it would have been an ego decision, but I’ve reached to point now where it is the right decision.”

Ms Villa-Lenkeit, 42, is the owner of Newtown Curtains, LLC, a company that provides high-end design and fabrication of custom fabric accessories for the home, such as drapery treatments, bed ensembles, and upholstery. But she also encourages and nurtures novice home-sewers by lending instructional videos and patterns.

“I don’t see [the videos] as competition,” she said. “I see it as a cool thing to do. When I transitioned from making garments to custom window treatments, there was so much help out there in the industry. I’ve always felt the need to help others like I was helped.”

She also found satisfaction in teaching a sewing class for children through the Newtown Parks & Recreation Department last summer.

“Most of the girls were about my daughters’ ages — 12 and 14 — but the youngest in the class was just 10 years old and a real cracker-jack seamstress,” she said. “All the girls really enjoyed it. I had picked up sewing machines at tag sales, so if any of the kids didn’t have a sewing machine at home, I gave them one at the end of the class.

“The kids had such a sense of accomplishment and I really enjoyed it,” she said. “So if anyone has an old machine they want to get rid of for $20, I’d be interested.”

Mary Villa-Lenkeit learned sewing from her grandmother while she was growing up in Florida, progressing from doll clothes to her own clothes and curtains. Her professional sewing experience began nearly 20 years ago when she started the New England Clothier, a home-based business that offered custom tailoring and garment alterations to bridal shops and dry cleaners.

After taking a hiatus from sewing to run a home-based day care business when her children were young, she returned to her first love five years ago, transitioning from making clothing to home goods, and taking courses at the Custom Home Furnishing Trade School in North Carolina. With a background that included a degree in business management, she believed she had the fundamentals to make her business operate efficiently.

She moved from the bedroom workroom into a 650-square-foot addition to her home, and soon had so much business that she needed to hire a seamstress to help her. Eventually she had four local seamstresses and an upholsterer working for her. Last year she began offering her services through the Painted Bungalow on South Main Street and also established design centers at Seymour’s Hardware in Wilton and at Window Works in Carmel, N.Y. Finally she decided the time was right to open her own store.

“It’s a perfect size, 600 square feet,” she said. “I don’t do any sewing here because I have seamstresses who work out of their own homes. I also use a fabrication facility in Minnesota for big jobs like when Schlumberger, a research and development company in Ridgefield, needed auditorium cushions. It was a $12,000 job that was like a puzzle because the cushions were custom, almost every single one was a different size. I measured and designed and told [the fabricator] what had to be made. My daughter and I were there until midnight putting them in.”

She has staff to help her in the store, a person who provides in-home design consultations for customers, and an installer. “I need a second installer because I’m so busy,” she said.

Newtown Curtains carries about two dozen different fabric lines including Ralph Lauren, Stroheim & Romann, Waverly, Robert Allen, and Kasmir, plus rods and other hardware. “I have lines that are good for formal designs, others good for casuals,” Ms Villa-Lenkeit said. “I’ve also branched into home accessories — candles, soaps, framed prints, mirrors, lamps — and feature them in the store along with upholstered pieces that are for sale, although I’m very fond of some of them and would hate to part with them.”

Ms Villa-Lenkeit has a website, www.newtowncurtains.com, where examples of her work can be viewed. She also doesn’t hesitate to offer useful advice.

“Window treatments generally cost from $100 to $400 a linear foot, depending on the fabric and the design,” she said. “So a four-foot window will be between $400 and $800, including hardware.”

A Newtown resident for more than 14 years, she has watched the growth of local development and saw the increasing need for her services.

“It was the right time to get the business out of my house,” she said. “I know the business from the ground up, having made and installed everything for years. I made mistakes and learned the lessons. I know the people that work for me are the right ones — they are very detail-oriented — and my level of experience is right.

“What started out as a romantic notion finally is my true love,” she said.

Newtown Curtains is open six days a week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 10 am to 5 pm; Thursday from 10 to 7; Saturday, 10 to 4. The telephone number is 270-8643.