Romille, You have been attacked by fabric snobs! Read many posts on this site and you will find people chortling over fabric they bought at yard sales, garage sales, thrift shops, etc. Unless that fabric has a designer or manufacturer name on the selvedge, the buyer has no idea where it originated. No one in a block swap would know where fabric came from, even if it were sleazy. They would just know it was not good fabric. I once took several fat quarters to a quilt guild where there were several quilt snobs and asked them to identify the Wal Mart fabric. I also had fabric from Jo Ann, Hobby Lobby and a quilt shop. Each of the fabrics got just about equal picks.
If you don't know about "hand," get someone who is experienced picking fabric to teach you. You can tell by touching the fabric what is good and what isn't by the way it feels. There is a lot of information about how fabric companies "finish" fabrics on the Net if you want to look it up
Please pay no attention to snobs of any variety! froggyintexas
Originally Posted by
romille
I am still new to the sewing world. The fabric at places like JoAnn always seemed a little sub par to me, but I figured I was just being biased or something. Recently though I have heard a couple comments that make me think their fabric might really be of lower quality.
The first was my mother, who doesn't sew, but has a friend that quilts. I was curious and asked where her friend shopped. She said her friend doesn't shop at the chain stores because of fabric quality, but wasn't sure on the reasoning.
The second was a comment on a fabric swap forum thread that said some swaps don't allow fabric from chains like JoAnn, Wal-Mart, or Hobby Lobby. I wasn't sure if that is due to quality or just to avoid duplicates in the swap.
What are your opinions on chain store fabric? Why do some avoid it?