I know that a few years back and it still may be true a great deal of the Moda Collections would work with many of their other collections as the colorways would work well with all of them. Designers have changed and there are so many options out there now I can see QS's trying to limit their inventory. Personally, I agree with you Tee Gee in that 2-3 colors of a collection doesn't cut it for me either. I want the choices I had before so I don't bother purchasing some collections because of this fact. I know and do add different fabrics/manufacturers with a quilt. I also want the same quality/feel the same in my quilts. However trying to do this online is not the best way for me to make that determination. The colors shown on each of our computer screens is not equal and a slight bit off of a particular color then has to go into my stash for another project which can be very frustrating.
I agree with a lot of the comments already stated but there are QS owners who purchase to their tastes more than the client's and unfortunately it was their mistakes which caused excess fabric no one wanted. It's an extremely hard call because there are QS owners who do everything but stand on their heads to please their customers fabric desires and some still sits there unwanted for whatever reason. IMHO, there are so many of us quilters with likes and dislikes that it is impossible to please everyone all the time. In these times of high fabric prices I'm sure there is a lot of that that plays into their decisions on what they purchase. So many QS's have had to close because of poor purchasing decisions
So we all just have to do our best when purchasing and know where we're purchasing from online. Call them when ordering online and see if they can help you with the color considerations between fabrics and the ones that help us are the ones that will stay in business. I just don't know a realistic solution to this problem but figuring out what works best for you or anyone for that matter. It is amazing to me that one can find entire collections online and various colorways but can't do do in some QS's. I guess that's the way it's going but it sure isn't going to help the QS's keep their customers. Quality in fabrics/collections is more important to me than having a ton of various fabrics by different manufacturers that anyone would have a hard time putting together for a particular type of quilt they want to make. Guess we'll just all have to see what our own QS's do and then make our decisions on where we will purchase in the future.