Fantasy Fabrics -- Slithering, Swinging, Sequined And Shining, It's What Glamour Is Made Of

The fabric alone could prod a home-economics class dropout to think about sewing something glamorous.

Customers at Jehlor Fantasy Fabric say it's the only shop in the Pacific Northwest that caters exclusively to the sequin-and-lame crowd. Fabric from the Southcenter-area store has shown up in the most bedazzling places:

-- Purple panne velvet with black iridescent coque feathers spinning on the ice with Olympic silver medalist Rosalynn Sumners;

-- Black crepe and hand-beaded lace swinging with jazz singer Diane Schuur;

-- Iridescent polyester chiffon dancing in the Pacific Northwest Ballet's production of "Carmina Burana";

-- Rainbow strips of acetate satin perching on the head of children's entertainer Tim Noah.

And they've got the poodle dress. A mannequin displays the pumpkin-colored frou-frou number the millionairess wore on the recent Washington State Lottery commercial - hat, tail and all. A California company made the dress with Jehlor's fabric.

The shop is a tourist stop for out-of-towners who've seen the ads in Sew News, a national monthly trade publication. Half the business is catalog mail order, much of it international.

Owner Lorie M. Graff and her four employees say they love coming to work. They never know who will phone or walk through the door that day. Graff matched Diane Schuur with her dressmaker, Erika Fuhrmann, after Schuur's sister stopped by looking for a referral.

When a dressmaker in Wolfpoint, Mont., discovered the Jehlor catalog a few years ago, a phone stampede broke out among locals desperately seeking fabric for prom dresses: "For two weeks, whenever we'd answer the phone and it would be one of them, we'd yell out, `It's Wolfpoint, Montana!' " Graff said.

But none of her customer stories tops Graff's own beginning. She and her former business partner, Jean Wood, were working at Renton District Court when they began taking belly-dancing lessons in 1973.

Oh, what to wear, what to wear. They researched and designed 24 different patterns for belly-dancing attire. The elaborate costumes became the envy of their classmates. It wasn't long before Graff and Wood began a weekend mail-order business selling their belly-dance costume patterns. To find fabric for their designs, they looked up a fabric wholesaler in the Yellow Pages.

"He said, `I guess I could sell to a couple of middle-aged belly dancers,' " Graff said. "He thought the whole idea was just a hoot."

Graff earned a dance-instructor certificate, and in 1981 she and Wood set out on a road trip. They taught dance and costuming workshops from Sedro-Woolley to Moscow, Idaho, and sold fabric from their pickup truck.

Success. They decided it was time to give up the day jobs. They opened a shop in Renton in 1981 and moved near Southcenter in 1987. Their partnership was as entwined as the store name, "Jehlor," derived from their first names. It was tough separating when Wood and her husband retired to Eastern Washington in 1988.

They had shared glamour, adven

ture, comedy and also tragedy. The year they opened the first shop they also grieved the death of Graff's son, a pilot, in a small-plane accident, and a few months later, her husband's death in a home accident.

"I could be totally depressed and overwhelmed, but I knew that was not what my husband and son would have wanted," Graff said. "I decided I was going to go out and put in my life enough joy for three people. That's just what I've done."

Graff has remarried, and her other three children now have children of their own. Graff credits her mother and father, now 83 and 85, with nurturing her faith in humanity and the power of love.

"My parents said the most important thing in the world is to be able to love," Graff said. "I feel that for everybody who comes in the door."

Customers sense this. Jeni Jordan was 19, looking for fabric for nightclubbing outfits on her first visit to the store. She expected uninterested sales clerks in aprons.

"I just thought it was so cool the way they were so interested in being involved in what I was doing," said Jordan, now 27 and a costume designer for Greg Thompson Productions in Seattle.

To find polypropylene spandex for a downhill speed-skiing suit designed by Bradley Joseph Priotti, Graff did a phone search through Switzerland. Priotti, who founded Viper High Fashion Sportswear in Renton, suited the nation's fastest downhill speed skier, Brian Taylor. Priotti also designs sportswear for aerobics, swimming and body-building.

"I never could have gotten as far as I've gotten now without Lorie's help in finding the right fabric throughout the world," Priotti said.

Such grateful customers are no fantasy.