Before my trip, I had done a little research and found a directory of quilt shops in Denmark. I was surprised to see there were over 50! Not bad for a country approximately 1/3 the size of the State of New York.
I isolated a few that looked promising, both for shopping appeal and location, but the shops I had on my short list were not open on days or at hours that jived with our tricky travel schedule. At the end of my trip, I did locate one that wasn’t on my list.
This is in a small town outside of Copenhagen called Lyngby, which wasn’t old/villagey, but very charming. (Southeast Michigan gals… think Rochester or Birmingham.) It was one of the first storefronts we passed, opening out onto a cobblestone city square, and I almost fell over when I saw it. I’d given up on getting any quilting fabric by this point.
“Stof” is Danish for fabric, and while you can’t see it in the pictures, handwritten signs painted on the outer wall specified it as a store for “stof og [and] patchwork.” I was delighted to see so many beautiful fabrics in such a cottagey sort of business.
I knew fabric was very expensive in Europe and particularly in Denmark, but wow! The average cost was $30 a meter! We have it so good here. Anyway, since it was my last full day (and I was out of cash), I found two gorgeous fabrics and asked for two meters of each. I just wanted to have a quilt made from material I had bought there, you know? 
Before the clerk (not the owner, who hovered in the office) cut, I asked whether they took VISA/Mastercard, since I hadn’t seen signs. They did not. She mentioned a bank down the street, but I wasn’t going to do a cash advance on a credit card, and I had no PIN to use it at an ATM, which I explained to her. I expressed surprise, given their prices and probable average sale, that they didn’t accept credit cards, and she said hardly anyone in town did. I knew that to not be the case and politely but firmly contradicted her. This is how I found out I could now argue in a second language. 
Mom offered to bail me out, so I put one bolt back and just got two meters of a gorgeous batik with every color in the rainbow.
Danish-only format notwithstanding, there are some nice pix on the website that are fun to browse. They have a great selection:
3 Comments
October 1, 2008 at 12:13 am
Hi April,
Jeg så lige din oplevelse i stof forretningen i Lyngby.
Hun (the Clerk) har IKKE ret. Denne stofbutik er omtrent den ENESTE i Danmark, hvor de ikke modtager credit cards.
Jeg har også undret mig over det og har bl.a. derfor aldrig købt noget derinde, eftersom jeg aldrig har kontanter på mig.
Det var godt, du sagde noget til hende, det er noget pjat, at de kun modtager kontanter.
Her er et par andre links, som du måske vil kunne lide:
http://www.stofogstil.dk/
http://www.fjoelner.dk/
http://www.kaiku.dk/
kh Gitte
May 12, 2009 at 7:40 pm
I would be very interested in your list of quilt shops in Denmark….especially in Copenhagen.
May 12, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Hello Carol~ Here are two links that may help:
http://www.cosman.nl/maps/map_en.php?cn=dk
http://www.cosman.nl/maps/list_en.php?cn=dk&ord=c
Happy shopping!