When I was a young my Mother made all my clothes, we had our list of fabric stores that lined Hawthorne Blvd, (Hawthorne, CA) Some of those shops where so small it was hard to even walk through, a narrow rectangular shaped little shop, we would have to pull the fabric out of a pile, and their would be a little old man at a table in the back. I think fabric was cost $.65 a yard- we would start at the least expensive store first looking for what we wanted. If we couldn't find what we were looking for we would continue down Hawthorne Blvd down to 190th street to a huge fabric shop. Mom would make me a dress for every day of the week, she finished them all before the first day of school. Our first step would be to go to a popular dress shop and get our ideas, then we would copy it. It turned out better because I was petite and Mom always needed to make the shoulders front and back smaller to fit me. The way I feel about old messy shops are...that's where you get the deals! Been a bargain shopper all my life!