Cotton Prices... Good News
#24
Junior Member
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Eastern Indiana
Posts: 241
A lesson on commodities. When the cotton yields per acre are low....the prices will rise. When there is an abundance or high yield the prices go down. My concern is not with the price of cotton as that the manufacturing of cotton....the raw product exported and the cotton fabric imported back to the US. Now we are at the mercy of foreign countries and will that in the end bite us.
#26
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: North Wales
Posts: 473
The owner of my LQS says it is not only the price of the cotton itself that affects the cost of quilting material, but also the ink/dyes - which include oil derivatives (?! I know nothing about printing!).
So the cotton price element is good for the quilter (not so much for the farmer) but until/unless the price of oil decreases as well I guess it is unlikely that the cost of material will drop significantly.
She also said that manufacturers are now only printing the amount of material ordered in by the fabric shops - so once it's gone, it's gone - whereas previously they would just do a 'run' of the fabric so the shops could get more from the factory if a particular fabric proved popular. I can see that this incurs less waste, which is a good thing obviously, but it does cause slight anxiety in that if I run out of a fabric partway through a quilt and the LQS has also run out then it becomes a bit of an unknown as to whether I'll actually find it elsewhere...
So the cotton price element is good for the quilter (not so much for the farmer) but until/unless the price of oil decreases as well I guess it is unlikely that the cost of material will drop significantly.
She also said that manufacturers are now only printing the amount of material ordered in by the fabric shops - so once it's gone, it's gone - whereas previously they would just do a 'run' of the fabric so the shops could get more from the factory if a particular fabric proved popular. I can see that this incurs less waste, which is a good thing obviously, but it does cause slight anxiety in that if I run out of a fabric partway through a quilt and the LQS has also run out then it becomes a bit of an unknown as to whether I'll actually find it elsewhere...
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10-01-2010 12:36 PM