Although I never leave the fabric warehouse without some fabric, each visit provides different choices. You can't depend on finding the same pattern you wish you had gotten more of the last time, but there is always something to get your creative juices going.
We must have hit a good day on our visit. We did see a lot of what we call the old favorites . . . The ones that are there time after time and you have to wonder who thought it would be a good idea to put a pattern like that on fabric. Yesterday, however, there was some new fabrics in the bargain section and I literally returned home with exactly what I wanted.
The fabric store is divided into two sections. Although everything is drastically marked down compared to the fabric store prices, some are still too rich for my blood . . . of bank account! Along one side of the place are about eight rows of flat fold fabric. This is either surplus of a particular fabric, end pieces, or last year's patterns. The aisles are almost five-feet high and you need muscles to pull out likely fabrics. My husband provides the muscle! All the fabrics in this section are $2.49 a yard. I have been looking for a run of fabric that has basically the same pattern but in different colors, sort of a blender fabric to fill out quilt patterns. Found it, yesterday, and actually got ten different colors and it was by one of my favorite fabric companies, David's Textiles. You have to understand that this is not seconds fabric but good, quality fabric that is just not popular or they had a surplus.
The other side of the store has fabric on bolts like at the regular fabric stores with prices ranging from $3.99 to $10.99 a yard which is still a lot less expensive than retail stores. I shop the $5.99 or less fabrics but allow myself a wistful tour of the expensive ones . . . without buying!
I'm not charged up and excited to begin another quilt . . . as soon as I finish the one I promised my younger daughter for her birthday!
I've had some interesting experiences at fabric stores. One time, I was visiting a really, really seconds fabric store where you had to be careful as there was a reason it was so cheap. There was a whole row of the most awful fleece fabric. It was a camouflague pattern in off olive green, neon orange, and bright yellow. I don't know what situation would have every matched that pattern for hiding! I was standing in shock at the display when mother walked into the store with five, little boys . . . all sporting obviously homemade jackets . . . made of that very same fabric.
My favorite time was when I was having my fabric measured and cut at the fabric warehouse and the clerk got a phone call. She looked perplexed as she listened and then said, "Yes, we do have pink fabric but you will have to come in and see for yourself. We have more than one pink!"
I have also been one to purchase fabric that made people wonder! My youngest son was five years old and he fell in love with a deep reddish pink fabric with giant, lifelike snakes on it. I told him he could pick the fabric he wanted for his shirt . . . and he did! The clerk laughed as she measured and it cut and quipped, "This is the first we've sold of this since it arrived last week!"
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