Originally Posted by
libber
I was talking to a Joann's asst. mgr last weekend, who previously owned her own quilt store. I shared with her the stories I'd heard. What she said was that there was a separate section of what they refer to as the premium fabrics for quilting. I looked at them, trouble is they all have Joann's label on the bolt end. Then she told me about Joann's getting in fabrics from manufacturers that are 2 years old or more ( the designs) so you can sometimes find prints from the likes of Moda, Hoffman, etc. if you can recognize the print or the designer. Those bolts do not have their original manufacturer label, they have a Joann's label. Whether all this is accurate I cannot verify as fact, I just talked to an asst. mgr. who knew plenty about quilting fabrics. Bottom line, I do not ever buy fabric from W-M or Joann's, I learned my lesson the hard way.
Well... there's a grain of truth in here but as a whole I think it's not really quite accurate.
In the novelty fabrics selection of JoAnns, you will find fabrics by Robert Kaufman and Timeless Treasures. Many, if not most, of these are older prints that have been around a while. They're classics, having been reprinted many times over the years. Our Timeless Treasures sales rep told us that TT sells their designs only to quilt shops for the first six months, and after that they may offer those designs to the chain stores.
As far as I know, only Debbie Mumm designs lines for both the chain stores AND quilt shops. And every time I orderd one of her Quilt Shop lines for our store, I lived to regret it... because customers know that her designs are attractive in all of her lines (chain and LQS ones), and price-wise we cannot compete with the chain stores. So as long as she is still designing chain-store lines I will not order her designs for our shop.
April Cornell used to design only for Moda, but now she designs premium lines for JoAnns. Fabric designers do not stay with one fabric company forever; they jump ship fairly often. So you will frequently see fabrics at JoAnns with designs that look similar to fabrics you found in a LQS a few years back. That doesn't mean they are actually the same fabrics, though.