I can't pay full retail of $12 to $15/yd for premium fabrics. I shop the sales and use coupons to get what I need. I also buy pieces at thrift stores when there's something I like. Some of my favorite fabrics have come from them.
The east coast used to have a lot of textile mills. It became cheaper/ more profitable for the manufacturers to move overseas just like a lot of our other industries did. We can complain all we want but we're all a part of that problem. We can complain about unions too but when you look at the wages and working conditions in many of those old mills something had to be done. We accepted the corporations' decisions to move overseas and bought their products instead of refusing to. Now the mills are pretty much gone and there are no other choices. Also poor quality isn't necessarily the fault of the overseas producers. It's the fault of the people requesting the product to be made. Many of them ask "How cheaply can you make this?" instead of "How well can you make this?". It's a complicated issue and there are no easy answers. Also fuel prices are high and the cost of energy drives the cost of everything else.
I think there will come a time when fuel prices outweigh cheap labor and we will start producing more goods at home again.
My 2 cents,
Rodney