One of the fabric manufaturer's reps talked to a group of us. The quilt store fabric - in only some cases with certain lines - may be similar to what you would find at Joanns or Walmart but:
- the quality of the material is different
-the number of times the material goes through the various printings is different.
His company sold only to LQS's due to the price needed to offset the quality fo the material and the extral printings done and the color control.
Made sense.