Originally Posted by stitchinwitch
Does anyone know exactly WHY fabric prices are going up? How many of you plan to "cut back" or will you still continue to buy? And I'm referring to buying at your LQS, NOT yard sales, discount businesses, etc. Luckily I have so much stash (hopefully in the right colors) that I won't need to buy anymore.
I received the following explanation from the owner of my LQS, quiltfabric.com. She does explain why, but not how much.
"While I am on China, that is where the cotton is woven into fabric which is then shipped to Korea to be printed for our quilt fabrics (not the batiks, but everything else). The price of cotton has been going up for various political (like Pakistan won't export cotton to China anymore) and environmental (lousy crop year)reasons. Hence the price of fabric is going up. Not a good time to raise prices. I have talked to at least four presidents of fabric manufactureres about it in the past two weeks. They would not budge on prices but at least I got some of the explanation."