I find myself in the same quarry. Since the only lqs closed, the closest is in 3 directions, each one about 30 minutes +/-. BUT.. Less will take me anywhere so the problem is, at least in what I have noticed, each owner has a tendency (unintentual) to buy what they feel is the most applicable to their customers. And then when it comes in I notice it's more to their liking then ours. When they do bring in a really nice line, they normally do NOT bring in the whole line (collection). This leaves me with the pattern I want to make but not all the fabrics. So basically with my particular background, I tend to buy on line and have over the years, narrowed down my favorite 5. I watch for pricing and it can be as much as 50 cents a yard less, I watch for the quanities they carry and if they carry the whole line. This is extremely important as for the newer or less experienced quilter (namely me for one) they don't realize that if they go to the fabric manufactures website, they always have patterns for the newly sold collections. These are FREE downloads. So your are holding a pattern that you truly want to make, you fell in love with the collection and the shop only purchased certain yardages. Anything after the first run is not as pretty or the same feel as most of the manufactures will do a second line run for discount shops... I am sure there are more of you who know more then I do about this, but if you can find a way to bite the bullet and purchase all the fabrics of your taste, then do it. I am just pulling out a stack of 3 year fabrics that has that "special" pattern that I am going to make for myself.
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