ROCKLAND—If being dragged into fabric shops by your mother as she searched for 1970s patterns was your childhood experience, Clementine is going to turn that frown upside down.

Leah Ondra, 32, is the latest young business owner to set up shop in downtown Rockland at 428 Main Street. Her shop, Clementine, offers fabrics, supplies and notions (pins, ribbons and buttons, etc.) to make a handmade wardrobe or craft project as well as creative goods such as sketchbooks, wool felt, beading materials, and hand-dyed yarn.

The Midcoast has really taken off with the Maker Movement. The ability to make garments or home goods with your hands is a very attractive concept for many people who live here and don’t have—or really even want—an excessive amount of shopping outlets. For the crafty person, Clementine is a candy store.

“Oh yeah, we are your gateway drug,” she said, laughing.

Ondra, safe to say, has made a business out of her passion.

“I was making dresses for my Troll dolls when I was six. I used a stapler before I learned how to use a needle and thread.”

After studying costume design in college, every job Ondra has had since has been in retail. When she was living in San Francisco, she taught crafting classes, but upon returning to Midcoast Maine and settling in Rockland with her husband in 2011, she helped open and manage a craft store in Belfast called Fiddlehead Art Supply. After several years of that experience, Ondra wanted a business closer to home and decided to open her own store.

“Just to be able to meet people who absolutely love the same things I do every day has really been great,” she said.

Color virtually explodes all over the store with 150 bolts of fabric lining the walls (and more to come). At the front of the store, a cubby is filled with skeins of wool produced by her mother's cottage business, Starcroft Fiber Mill. Her mother, Jani Estell, works with a Downeast farm on Nash Island to shear the sheep, process and mill the wool, spin it into yarn, then dye it.

“I wanted to offer a taste of yarn here just to get people thinking about simple kinds of knitting projects they can do, like a scarf,” said Ondra.

The bolts of fabric that line her shop couldn’t be any farther away from the dusty old ‘70s patterns, but that’s not to say the other eras don’t make an appearance. She incorporates a lot of modern fabric designs as well as Michael Miller kitchy, vintage fabrics (like 1950s housewife icons of clotheslines and mixing bowls.) Other fabrics have a decidedly retro 1960s feel, updated for 2014 that appeal to young people who want to hand make their own fashion statement.

”That’s part of the costume designer in me,” she said. “Being a Maine girl and reading Laura Ingalls Wilder really inspired me to make my own clothes.”

There are so many neat materials in her shop to work with like a jewelry section with vintage beads. But, what can this store offer the average person who isn’t all that handy or crafty? “If you like a fabric and want to make some kind of simple home project out of it like a pillowcase or a curtain, you don’t need to know how to use a sewing machine,” she said. “We have iron-on and press-on fabric adhesives as well as Mod Podge, which is all-in-one glue, sealer and finish. So, you could take a composition journal, for example, slap some of the glue on it, lay on your fabric, put another coat on top and now you have a beautifully decorated journal. Or, you can take our various sheets of wool felt, cut them out in shapes, put a little stuffing in them and now you’ve got holiday ornaments or a little baby mobile. Or, you can hand sew ribbons or other embellishments onto the felt and make pouches or pencil cases."

Garments, however, are her main passion.

“There’s been a huge resurgence in small, independent companies all over the world selling their own patterns and they’re designing with more of today’s female body shape in mind,” she said. “For some people, there’s nothing for them to buy at the mall that fits their personality. So, our store is accessible to girls who favor the rockabilly look or the 1940s pin up aesthetic, as well as Japanese-inspired garments with clean, modern lines.”

Clementine also sells an array of books and patterns that cater to vintage dressmaking.

“Between Pinterest and the Internet, anyone can walk in here with a downloaded pattern for an outfit or a free tutorial for a project and find the materials here,” she said. “Another reason I wanted to open this shop is because my mom, sister and I would go shopping and become completely uninspired by what we saw. It doesn’t fit, the colors are drab or the fabric is kind of chintzy. Or, finding something that really was well made and gorgeous, but it was such a simple shape, we thought, ‘Well, we could make that.’ ”

She doesn’t have any immediate plans to offer classes in sewing or crafting at her shop, but said she’s very accessible and is happy to be a liaison to those who want to learn. “Anyone who walks through the door and has a question or is stuck on something, I love to help out and talk them through the project,” she said.

For those without a sewing machine, and Mod Podge isn’t going to cut it; however, Ondra has a mental Rolodex of seamstresses in the area who she can refer a customer to if the person has a pattern and a favorite fabric, but would rather someone else made the dress. Ondra’s other suggestion is to go to Goodwill, find a dress that inspires you, and bring it to Clementine for simple ideas on how to alter it.

“Even if you’re not crafty and you’re having a bad day, come in for a little color therapy,” she said.

She’s planning on offering the shop as a showcase once a month for people who have finished projects for a celebratory Show And Tell.

”People can use this place as their community to share tips and tricks,” she said.

For more information visit clementineme.com. To get some crafty garment or home goods ideas visit their Pinterest page.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com