I must have the only JoAnn's in the world then! MY girls know everything. They are very helpful. Sometimes I go brain-dead and just can't, for the life of me, pick out a backing or a binding and they come up with the best ideas. They are quilters. It is a nice little store, not the big one where they sell everything. It is just a little store. I know the people, I know where everything is and they are just the nicest people. And I will tell you where it is - it is in the Midway Shopping Center in St. Paul, MInnesota. So many quilt shops around our neck of the woods have closed down and good old Midway JoAnn's just keeps a'pluggin' along! Must be the help. I have never, ever had a problem. I have been to other JoAnn's and didn't like them, probably because they were too big. And probably because their help didn't know anything! I am truly sorry you had to go through all that for batting. I honestly don't think some of the clerks give a rip (to coin a phrase) about any of the fabric, batting, sewing machines, rulers, anything. They are there to make money and that's all they care about. Ok, I have vented my spleen and I feel better. Now I am going to go and pin a quilt together and get ready to hand quilt it. It's a baby quilt, but what you have to go through to get it ready to quilt. I get the top all nice and flat, pin it down, turn it over and it is all verschmutzt (messy)! Unpin, re-lay, repin! And besides all that we are going to have some beautiful weather today - in the 60's hopefully and we have a clump of paper birches that are about 40 years old and have more leaves on those trees than the whole city of St. Paul. We will get those raked up and then we should be pretty well done. We have a neighbor who bought 3 loads of 1/2 horse and 1/2 cow manure and will be shoveling some of it on our gardens. Beautiful garden to look forward to, eh? Edie