I would lean towards small prints, tone on tone and things that can be used with more than one project. You can then look for focus fabric for a specific project and choose fabrics from your stash to coordinate. This way you can get a variety of fabrics on sale as they close out the fabric dept. but only have to look for and spend on the focus fabric.
Or, put your focus fabric and prints and tonals together with a project in mind for those and have it all together when you are ready to work with that fabric grouping.
Good luck and sorry you are losing your fabric dept. There was a thread on here not too long ago about keeping the Walmart fabric depts. and bringing them back. We'll see what happens.