On my way to this board this evening, I scanned the headlines at MSN.com and saw an article about cotton prices on the rise due to low supplies and high demand. Not good news for any of us.

Well, many of us have said that we could live to be 115 before we ever used up our stash. :?

Guess we will be testing that theory. :thumbdown:

piney

I will be looking at mine a lot closer but first I better buy more before the price goes up.

I have lots of fabric but I still want more. I guess I better get busy buying before the price increase.

Uh Oh!!! I better stock up on fabric before the prices go up! Thanks for another excuse to add to my stash. :lol:

There's yet another de-stashiong sale going on as we speak. SHe says she has over 80+ to list. Better check it out. Then again, maybe we should warn her to keep it with prices going up. ROFL

oh my.......

Coffee is going up too. What's next? Chocolate? LOL

I'm madly thinking of what sorts of prints or textures or tones I need to fill in my stash before prices go up, and then when the fur starts to fly, or rather the fibers, I'm going to hunker down and use what I have.
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They're taking all the fun away from us!! I guess I better get busy and start buying more FABRIC, but where's the money coming from? My SSDI checks aren't showing an increase for the next 1 1/2 yrs.!! Oh my!!

I was shocked to see batting had raised by $2.00 per yard at Hancocks, today. How are we going to keep this hobby if prices keep increasing so much? Maybe we will have to grow our own cotton and weave it!

We may have to revert back to what our ancestors did and Recycle clothing....
Old blankets can be used as batting....
etc....

LOL, Debbie, you are A BRAT! I am trying to save my money, and NOW I HAVE TO GO LOOK, lol!

Then we make "summer quilts" - no batting, just tops and backs 8-)

Dh read that yesterday. When I got home from sewing he said, "You'd better quit giving fabric away and hang onto to it." He saw me walk out the door with one of those huge Aldi reusable bags crammed full of fabric. BUT..... I was on my way to a ladies house to sew Christmas stockings for the troops. The stores will no longer donate fabric. Since I have 5 LARGE storage tubs full of Christmas fabric I felt that I could donate some. I told him that we only have 4 beds in the house and have Christmas quilts for 3 of them, this is DD's last year for school class parties so no more goodie bags. I just don't need quite all that I had.

Did anyone else hear the story on NPR this morning about cotton? Apparently farmers decided to switch away from growing cotton to produce more corn and soy. Since these are used for energy, they bring in a higher return. There are 40% less acres of cotton grown now than in the past. That's why the price is going up - less supply drives prices up.

The cotton doesn't look too good here this year - not that I'm an expert on cotton crops but it doesn't look like they are getting that much out of the fields this year..
first it was too wet and then it's been too dry..

When is the price increase coming?

by January 2011. Natural disasters which occured this year in Pakistan and China are causing huge demands for simple cotton clothing. Combined with what another member said about cotton farms planting soy for energy and higher profits instead of cotton makes the supply lower.

I've been on a self-imposed fabric buying 'fast' to help offset the cost of my Pfaff Creative Vision. But I may have to rethink this if prices are going up a bunch. The problem is I'm always seeing new collections I want, even without knowing what I'll do with them! And of course, I've learned the hard way if you wait for sales, you may have trouble getting the whole colelction or enough yardage!

Here in the land of cotton, many of the farms are selling out and the cotton fields are disappearing. There is a huge cotton field across the way from my development. I cringe to think that it will some day become another development. The one I live in used to be a cotton field as well :'(

It's such a cool crop - and so pretty to look at.

It's trickling in now. A lot of Hancocks fabric is now $11 and up.

You know how quilts can be dated due to some of the circumstances going on in the world, certain fabrics/colors weren't available during some wars, etc.? Well we as quilters may have to shift away from the 100% and become really creative in our fabric choices. A hundred or two hundred years down the road Quiltologists will look at the quilts of 2012 and say, "We can tell this was quilted between 2010 and 2015 because there was a cotton shortage which caused prices to skyrocket."
But as a farmer's daughter I can tell you this: If the prices of cotton skyrocket the farmers will plant more of it.

When fabric was moving over $9.00 a yard, and I am a fabric diva, I started to cut back and I hated to have to give up some of my more favorite online quilt shops. I only have two lqs left and the they are both at least 30 minutes away and their prices are always on the high end. Plus in the years that I have buying fabrics from the several fabrics shops that Les would take me to, field trip day.. I began to see a trend. The fabrics that were carried, while a lot of the new groupings here and there, their order actually what they personally liked. I have one shop I love, but 1/2 of her shop is Thimbleberries, another is more battiques, and a strange mixture that leaned toward the modern and chic. And none of them would carry the entire line. I would go in with the perfect pattern and want this particular line of fabrics and colors and they wren't there,. I asked, did you sell out all ready? No.. we only ordered what we thought would sell. Okay.... but online I am finding that a collection is easier to complete instead of having to mix and match and it was enjoyable. But that price is just creeping up and I'm thinking well it's only another 10 cents a yard and then I look at it again and it's now 50 cents a yard more. Thank heavens for my overstock pantries of fabric and my stacks of plastic containers, not to mention the bins under the dining room table (covered by an oversized table cloth...

OMGOSH~~~NOT A GOOD THING.

Stock up at all online clearance sales, including cotton thread. I've noticed many of the newer cotton clothing in thrift stores and yard sales are are not quality fabric. Even the flannel shirts are thin.

Hear hear! So right! I hadn't got that far thinking about it. Thanks.
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Thats what I heard as well that prices are going up on cottons,

I don't worry so much about fabrics as there will always be places to buy them on sale. I tend to like the older collections anyway as I am not to fond of the newer bright, busy in your face patterns. My concern is my beloved King Tut thread. I already pay on sale 18.75 for 2,000 yards and believe me that is hard to find at that price. Normally it runs 24.95....you have to have thread to make a quilt and the thought of downgrading the quality of my thread makes me ill.

I guess we'll have to shop smarter and look out for sales etc.

Check out Marshalldrygoods.com for batting. I purchase it by the roll, I know 30 yards is a lot, but you will use it before you know it.

I read 15%, but you can bet that the commodity market will top that. I have 7 yards of a dark blue rose which I was about to give away, (isn't my particular color and don't know why I bought it) but I think I will just keep it and find a use for it. Time to use my JoAnns coupons good for a one cut of fabricl (no size limit)) especially for background fabrics.

Oh no! My whole stash fits in one (rather large) container! I will definitely run out in less than a year! I guess I need to go fabric shopping!

This is such sad news, but I have not put foot in a LQS in years around here. When I'm at a show or on a trip (Seattle) I do shop some LQS's. I made a resolution this year to use only from my stash. I've been pretty good and only bought some sales on-line about 3 times. It's more of a frabic fix than a gotta have. It's gotten pretty fun searching for fabric ~$3/yd. I don't buy it if I dont like it though. That eliminates about 1/2 the offerings in the clearance category. 8-)

What happens when the demand goes down because the price is too high? In the meantime, we will all have to use up our stash fabrics and recycle old clothes. I have already started hoarding. Maybe these will become the "utility" quilts of our generation. Personally, I do not think our quilters' cottons are by any means cheap, it is the clothing market that will suffer the most.

I think this is a conspiracy.....to get us away from our passion and go back to serving "man" HA!!...away with cotton, away with coffee, away with chocolate??......murder on the horizon!!

Reminiscing about the days when I started quilting with LQS fabric and was paying "highway robbery" prices of $4 a yard.......Sigh.

One decade ago when I closed my shop in Dallas TX most of our highest prices were in the $8.25 range. Double sigh.

Now I'm in sticker shock when I upend a bolt at the LQS and see $10+ written on it. Thank God for stash!

Jan in VA

I bought a bunch of fabric panels and fabric on a rummage sale yesterday. Very reasonable prices. Had 2 grocery sacks full.

The only Hancock store or fabric store left near me (in mid-town Atlanta, GA with more than 4 Million people!) not only increased prices, they try to sell their old, old, old stocks for hugely inflated prices ($9.00 for material that's not fit for anything but maybe a night gown for a color-blind person!)

You may be happy to know that the store is empty and so is the Michael's craft store next door. Obviously, I am not the only person angry over the rip-off.

People are smart, smarter than the store managers. (I like seeing people reacting smartly to the abusive practices, I like it a lot!)

I bought 1/2 a yard of an accent material on sale because I needed exactly that amount of that fabric. I did not browse.

It's a good thing I have built my stash. Right now I will get a few more smaller needed items online and on sale. That's going to be it for many years.

People will charge what the market will bear.
Let's not bear it.

As a quilter and a wife to a cotton farmer, all the costs incidental to growing cotton have increased dramatically over the past few years, while the price per pound we have received for our cotton is still very low. I hate paying $9.50 per yard for cotton fabric or $34.95 for a Moda layer cake that says "made in Korea".

Perhaps we should all bombard the fabric makers and insist on labelling where the cotton is made. This can easily be done along the selvedge.