Here is a website for Quilting in America 2010 and its stats:
http://www.quilts.com/announcements/...0_OneSheet.pdf
Quilting is a $3.58 Billion dollar industry. Myself and many, many other people wrote, texted, emailed, etc. Walmart about 2 years ago about how important their fabric department and quilting was to us.
I emailed the stats page to them also when I wrote to them. After so many responses to them closing fabric departments, maybe they got to thinking about the billions of dollars they were losing not having fabric centers and they also know fabric stores are going out of business and they can pick up on those markets as well. Just a thought...