This is much better than my system. I have been looking for one fabric for weeks! Here I pop ... and there it is. At the pricer end of the spectrum, but I have what I want!! Totally worth it ... THANK YOU in caps for narrowing it down!!

That is a super site that I use when I am searching for a particular fabric.

When I work at my LQS I am often helping our customers find a specific fabric that they are looking for on this site. I am known for being able to find their needed fabric. It is just another service we provide our customers... we know we can't carry it all.

isn't it kind of crazy the range in price for the same fabric? i know some of it has to do with region, some areas are just more expensive than others,
but here where i live we have one shop that pretty much prices everything at 7.95; batiks, 8.95...then you drive across town to the other shop and the same fabric is 9.50, batiks 10.95...
one is in business (for 30 years) to make good money at it...the other, a small shop opened in the first place to give common folk the opportunity to buy nice fabrics without breaking the bank, they make enough to keep the doors open, but are not really making a living at it (luckily the owners are retired)
it thrills me to find a new shop with reasonable prices, and when i enter the ones i feel are ridiculous i still look, some of them really are a treat to walk into, but usually do not give them my $$, unless they have a good sale corner and i find something.
the power of the internet has been such a wonderful resource for shopping! :)

Thanks for the great tip! I will certainly use it alot.

Wow great! THANKS for that link....I've spent LOTS of time searching for specific fabric and/or patterns before, this will be a great help!

Wow - thank you!

I didnt know you could do that! How utterly cool! You made my day.

Great website! Thanks for sharing. Now I will be spending even more time on the comp looking for a good deal ;)

A store not making a living will close faster than the place making a profit. I did it for four years. Made enough to pay the bills - most of the time. But it ruined my retirement savings and I had to close my shop. I tried to make the cost of fabric, classes - everything reasonable in order to get the sales. It never happened and I had to close and go back to working.

Now I look at those places whose prices are up there (and I will shop there first every time) and they have staff to pay and a nice environment with plenty of product - they are thriving.

In essence, I had it backward.

I'm sorry for your experience and I also thank you for your perspective. There's a lot more to running a business than meets the eye!

Those of you using www.quiltshops.com: it's a great tool, and it represents MANY shops, not just one. So some of the variation in price could well be due to the fact that a fabric might be on sale in a particular store at the moment, and might not be if you go back next week.

When you're looking for a particular fabric, do you all know that you can do a search at www.google.com on the manufacturer's name (and/or collection name) plus the pattern number (if you know it), and that is also a nice easy way to find what you're looking for? Google provides a "shopping results" section, with pictures and prices listed right there. You can sort those results by price, too.

While it's not absolutely necessary to have the pattern number, it's faster, and more focused, if you do! Most of the fabric manufacturers have websites where you can easily look up pattern numbers for recent collections.