Your not cheap...prices are ridiculous! I was so frustrated on my last trip to a quilt shop that I decided to give up quilting! That lasted till I got home and saw my current project sitting there. I do hit the garage sales just hoping for a find.

Thanks for the tip. I am on her site right now.

I have to admit that I buy way too much fabric on speculation of a future project. As prices go up, I am thankful that I have a large enough stash that I will have many future projects to do. However, I have to agree with an earlier post about limiting what I give away because it is too expensive to buy more, so I am going to have to make do with what I have.

We are very blessed here in America with our prices (and spoiled :wink: )

And bear in mind... the LQS owner is probably also getting squeezed from the government in terms of taxes; rent and utilities are probably also increasing. If (s)he has valued employees, (s)he also will want to thank them by giving them a little bit of a raise each year... and it all has to come from somewhere.

I am pretty frugal, but unfortunately, the price isn't completely out of line - about a dollar more than I'm seeing on average here. It does make me choose carefully which fabrics are added to my stash - and I make a point of hitting my LQS's monthly end of bolt sale.

Cheers, K

There's probably VAT, I'm not sure. Overheads and taxes, don't really know either I'm afraid. Not much use am I? :lol:

There are differing levels of TVA here - and some goods regarded as non-necessities carry the very high rates. I find it strange that even the British produced fabric is so much cheaper in the US than in Britain also. The prices for fabric here are pretty uniform and you never see any quilt fabric or other quilt supplies reduced so the quilt shops obviously have to buy at top whack anyway.
I buy everything online from UK - but have to stick with the suppliers who will post to Europe, and at sensible cost.

I am fortunate to live in PA where there are lots of fabric stores so if you find a store that sells good stuff at a lower price, just go there. I usually get stuff on sale except when I just really, really have to have that fabric! As for Joanne's, you have to look hard to find the good fabrics as a lot of them are kind of flimsy. For some quilts I had to go online as no one carried the fabrics I was looking for. Padukas of Kentucky is a good store and they do have good sales and the price of shipping is not too bad if you consider the gas you would have used looking all over for that fabric which no one had anyway.

I started trimming from my budget last year when all the economic indicators showed higher prices were coming and coming fast. I stocked up all the non food basics we used while they were at the lower prices. Simple things like razors, soap, laundry detergent, paper products, shampoo, make up, deodorant, trash bags, ziplock bags, foil, cleaning products, etc. I bought cases of most items and put in the garage. I haven't had to cut my grocery budget now that the food prices are so high by not having to buy all the non food items. If prices stay high I'll start restocking at sales and clearances from the food budget. We can eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a few meals to pay for the cases to stock. The more I save on what I have to buy the more I have to spend on what I want to buy is my way of thinking. I hate spending good money on needed items like toilet paper! LOL

I buy my fabrics in discounted remnants at craft, fabric, and stores like Walmart. I make alot of strip quilts and eclectic quilts and interestingly enough they seem to be what my family prefers when given a choice for gifts. I buy fabric, table cloths, sheets, even interesting clothing at thrift stores and yard sales for quilts. I just made a quilt for my 11 year old daughter out of all the jeans she's outgrown and it's her favorite. I used the pockets and all the little embellishments that were on the jeans originally. This made it not just a quilt, but a memory. Isn't this what quilting really is? Isn't this how quilting came to be? Our grandmothers and their grandmothers had little scraps of fabric that they made into something beautiful--nothing was wasted. Quilting is the ultimate in repurposing, recycling, and being thrifty.

That is so true. My sister and I each have a quilt that obviously was made out of our great grandmother's clothing. Both the quilts have the same fabrics and they are utilitarian quilts. When I was first learning how to quilt, I cut up some old cotton shirts of mine that I wore in junior high. Somehow they hadn't made it to the Goodwill bin, so they became blocks. I still have one of those original blocks I made when I was a teenager. (My mom only bought fabric at the store that she was making into clothes, so I didn't even think about buying yardage for quilting, I just used the scraps left over from her sewing projects to "play" with. I still have the scraps from the cotton dresses my mom made me when I was a preteen that I am saving to put into a memory quilt for her.)

I think I might make a wild and crazy quilt out of some of my dh's old western shirts from the 80s. Thank GOD those went out of style. He loved them so much they are still hanging in our closet. Maybe when he is deployed I can surprise him with a special quilt made out of all those crazy shirts. (Save me a bundle on fabric!!!)

At the moment I am extremely glad I have stash. May not be the "current" color - but by gosh, it will be used!

I agree with Peyton... in ontario, our decent fabrics at LQS's are 17.00 a meter... and there is just shy of 3 feet to a meter...so When I can get to the state that is a bonus for me... the best I have seen here is 10.99 a meter

When will retailers get a clue that if they weren't so greedy, they'd probably sell more at a 50% mark-up? If you sell twice as much at the lower price as you do at the higher price, your still breaking even dollar wise but much richer in happier and repeat customers!!!!

Thank God I loaded up a few years ago in Paducha and everywhere. My goal was to be supplied before hubby retired. I have so much fabric I coud do a store lol. I very seldom buy fabric now..only when I can get the good quilters fabric at hancocks for half price ....oh I will be dying my fabrics soon too. I already have 200 yds of painted fabric.

OK, from the inside, here's what's happening with fabric prices.

First, there are the grey goods, that's the base fabric before it's printed and finished. China has been undercutting the grey goods market for years, artificially holding down the prices with government manufacturing subsidies, until finally they have forced manufacturers in every other country out of the weaving business. Now almost all grey goods are manufactured in China. Now that they've cornered the market in grey goods, they're raising the prices astronomically and incrementally, since even people in China now want to make more than 12 cents an hour.

Next, there's dye prices. Printing dye costs have been steadily increasing as have the chemicals used for finishing. Wax used in manufacturing batiks has also increased radically in cost. And so it goes.

Also, as most quality fabrics are printed in Korea and Japan, they have to be shipped by ocean freight. You all know what's been happening with fuel prices, right?

What all this means is that as retailers, we've seen our wholesale prices increase dramatically, this year especially, as the Chinese have put the squeeze on the gray goods market. Also, there's now a world-wide shortage of cotton due to droughts in several large growing areas.

It's not a case of LQS being greedy, they're trying to survive. Bear in mind that the quality of goods at your local quilt shop and in high quality online stores is considerably higher and thus it is more expensive than the stuff that's sold at Joanne's, Walmart and other chain stores. LQS and quality online stores pay roughly double at the wholesale level what the large chains pay for fabric when shipping is figured in. Manufacturers also make "special" lines for the big chains, stated another way, they make cheaper goods to retail just in chains, using lower quality gray goods and lower quality printing and finishing. They also are having the goods printed in China where the cost and quality of printing is much lower. Most top quality fabric printing is done in South Korea and Japan. Check the ends of the bolts next time you're in a fabric store, that will tell you a lot about the quality, just based on where it's printed. Most quality small retailers are quilters themselves, and we check the quality before we buy the fabric, and if it's lower quality than expected when it arrives, we send it back. Then it goes to the big chains and the big chain online retailers at closeout prices.

Also, your LQS provides a place to hang out, quilt, take classes and visit with your friends. Can you do that in the big chain stores? Not in any I've ever been in... And the space that that requires costs money.

An earlier poster or two mentioned the fact that fabric in the USA costs a lot less than it does in most countries in Europe, Australia, etc. This is true. People can order from online stores in the USA, pay high shipping costs, and still come out ahead on prices. One of the reasons for this is that most of the design houses and large distributors are still in the USA. We sell a lot of British designed fabric to people in England. Why? Check a map sometime. It's a lot farther from Korea to England by boat than it is from Korea to the USA, and the VAT and other taxes added on to goods at each stage of manufacturing add tremendous costs to the product in those places.

The bottom line is that with rent, advertising, furnishing, heat, electricity, phone, transportation, wages, government compliance costs, business licenses, supplies, equipment, and myriad other overhead items in addition to the fabric and shipping costs, $10/yd barely covers the costs of operation of a brick and mortar LQS. I, quite frankly, find it amazing that any of them can stay in business and indeed, dozens close down every week. With slightly lower overhead, we in online-only stores can make a profit at that level, but especially when faced with ruthless competition from huge online retailers that are willing to take a loss to drive competition out of business, we're being forced to operate at unprofitable levels just to survive. Many LQS have opened online stores that support their brick and mortar operations.

Not to put too fine a point on it, there is no greed here. Shop owners, both LQS and online, try to do everything they can to hold prices down. I don't know anyone in the industry that artificially increases prices, and I don't know anyone that's getting rich selling fabrics at the retail level, except maybe the big chain retailers.

Running a store is a crap shoot, you buy and pay for product up front and hope that you have a selection that people like, if you don't, or if people don't know that you have it, you sit on it for months and years and then finally sell it at a loss.

Like we always say, "We lose a little on every sale, but we make it up in volume." :mrgreen:

Hey, support your local quilt stores, and your family-owned online shops. It might cost you a little more, but you know they'll stand behind the product, sell you higher quality goods, give you better customer service, and if you support them, they'll be there for you in the future. And the bonus is, the product we sell will last a lot longer and look a lot better than the low-quality and second-line stuff you get at the large chains...

[Note: I realize that we're new here, with just a few posts, but this is a subject that needs to be discussed from both sides, the customer side and the retailer side. Maybe when we all understand each others' problems and the realities of the business, we won't have as much animosity and distrust among us. Let's hope...]

Had to buy backing (flannel) for my sons quilt. I HATE to pay retail especially for backing, but this is a special quilt (at least to me). at $9.50 yd it was a tough buy, although it is a gorgeous flannel. On the frame now...
Oh did I mention I hate to pay retail for backings?

:cry: :cry: :cry:
been there ... done that

Thanks you QKO for letting us know how the fabric industry works. I know everyone's money is tighter but I sure appreciate the prices I pay now. Knowing the real story is an eyeopener for all of us.

To QKO, thanks for the inside scoop on China, many of us probably were not aware of their plan of attack. :thumbdown:

Many of us, myself included, are very familiar with the dynamics of what goes into calculating the "price" of an item. Having been in business myself for almost 20 years (nothing to do with quilting/fabric), I am well aware of what it takes to run a profitable business. Guess I should have directed my comment at manufacturers instead of the retailers!!!!

I have look bolt ends in every fabric shop I go to, there is no indication where the fabric is printed. There is nothing but lists of numbers and bar codes. All I can ever decipher from the bolt is that it is 100% cotton. No thread count either which really irks me. Why the big secret of the quality on the bolt from the manufacturer? How can a customer read the bolt ends and know exactly what the quality is? I get the feeling some shops do buy the less quality fabric and mix it in with the good quality fabric. The best shops I have visited have a bargain fabric area where you know it's not the best but good. Many shops owners have told me the bargain area has carried the shop through some lean months.

I also work in retail(office products), and the delivery cost is eating our lunch! The wholesaler we've been dealing with for the past 20 years no longer has their own trucks, but contracts that out. So there is now a fee per delivery of $x and a surcharge of $xx if the order is less than $1000, a larger fee if it is less than $500, and another fee if it is from an out of area warehouse (like it's our fault they don't have it in Dallas and we had to order it from St Louis!). We used to order (and deliver) every day, now we order twice a week and deliver likewise.

So it's not just LQS having these sort of problems...and BTW the price of paper is going up again from the mfr.

Yes, unfortunately the last couple of years more and more manufacturers are omitting the country of origin on their bolt caps, and lots of retailers are putting their own barcodes, etc on there.

When we buy fabric, we look at it, feel it, and ask lots of questions. And there are manufacturers we have come to trust. Nothing says you can't as a consumer email or call the manufacturer's customer service department and get answers yourself, but the best thing is to educate yourself in what makes a quality fabric, and take it from there. Simple tests you can do yourself include holding the fabric up to the light. Is it thin? Can you see through it? Look closely at it, are the fibers thicker or thinner? Take a high quality piece with you to the store and compare. Feel it. Is it soft with a nice finish? Look close at the printing, are quality dyes used, is the printing distinct and clear, or muddy? Lots of things to look for...

As far as bargain fabrics are concerned, it really depends on what you're going to be doing with the fabric. If you're making, for instance, a tote that you don't expect to use for a long time, what's wrong with using cheap fabric? But do you really want to use cheap stuff on a quilt you're making as an heirloom gift for a loved one?

I've heard the statement made, "quality doesn't cost, it pays." I believe that...

I agree with QOK and with the rest of you, prices are making it difficult but the best sorce of quality fabric is still the LQS. I make 1 or 2 embroideried quilts every year, I put hundreds of hours in each quilt so there is no way I'm going to use "B" grade fabric or thread. With that said, I plan very carefully the fabric I buy, I buy enough that I know I will have extra (yes, even an experienced machine embroidery quilter will make mistakes) to redo a block or two, usually I buy at least a yard sometimes a 1 1/2 extra. I used to plan on $300. for fabric, now I plan on $350. per quilt. I buy all of my fabric at one time, that way I spend less on gas. Sometimes my LQS will have to order fabric for me but most of the time I can get what I want from their shelf stock. What I don't do anymore is buy "stash" fabric unless it is from a fellow boardmember. No impulse buying for me.

If I want to do a trial run of an embroidery design, I buy old pillowcases from the Goodwill, when they are full, I donate them to the homeless shelter, the kids love having a pillowcase that is embroideried.

If I want to make a sample of a quilt block, I use scrapes or old clothes. Then I turn those into dolly quilts for my great-granddaughters, they love them.

My personal goal is to not let any money or fabric get wasted. I think for me anyway it is a matter of being dollar wise, I can still make what I want I just have to be smart about it. I try to buy my quilting thread on sale as I know I will use it, I usually buy Signature brand and know that I will use beige, dark green and dark blue in abundance.

Hugs, Gail
trying to be a smart quilter

QKO, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for your post! You've put it very well, and touched on most of the behind-the-scenes issues that affect the shopowner.

I'd like to add just one more bit of information, regarding selling everything at 25% off (in other words, half the usual retail mark-up). If you do that, online, you may be inviting trouble from your suppliers. They (the fabric manufacturers) have a vested interest in keeping their retail customers in business, because then they (the manufacturers) have a place to sell their goods. A store that always sells everything at 25% off is going to catch the manufacturer's eye as being a threat to "the normal order of things". What could happen then? The manufacturer could decline to sell to such a store, or put them at the lowest priority for getting goods shipped. It's a kind of blacklist.

You could say, well, you'll make up in volume for what you don't make in mark-up but... the reality is, you can't *endlessly* sell more. There is a limit to the size of the market you're selling to, whether it is fabric, t-shirts, or vacation packages that you're selling. Especially if you're a LQS in a small town... there's only a certain area that you're drawing customers from, and when your market is saturated... it's saturated, and you're not going to be able to sell much more, no matter how low the price.

Just my perspective...

You're welcome! :D

I know some stores have a policy of "everything at xx% off." Many are arms of giant retailers and get their stocks at volume discounts. If you look carefully, lots of the stuff they're selling are warehouse closeouts that they've bought in big volume and gotten for next to nothing (the giant online store's version of the bargain table.) What really chaps is when you see brand new fabrics on sale for less than you had to pay to get them to your store! Selling at a loss in this case is a blatant attempt to drive smaller online stores and local shops out of business, and we've chosen to not carry brands that sell to these retailers. Some brands have chosen not to distribute to these stores, knowing that their many small retailers count for more than one or two giants. Other brands have the attitude that they'll sell to whomever can move their product. We choose not to carry the latter in our store.

Pricing is always a genuine problem. Again, as an online-only store, we're being squeezed between our operating costs, and our ability to compete with the big online stores, while at the same time trying to give our customers good value for their money, because we know that like us, most of them are being squeezed by the economy.

At the same time we're trying to get along with our local quilt shops. Unless you've run an online store (and by the way, you have a really nice one!) you can't understand all the costs and overhead involved with doing that. You might have lower rent and equipment costs, but how about your web development and advertising costs? You know what we're talking about. I don't think we could be in this business if I didn't do all the web development myself.

We've chosen basically to NOT compete with our local stores. For the most part, we don't carry the same brands as they do, and we view our market as global, not local. One of the big advantages (so far) that customers get by buying online is that they don't have to pay sales taxes on purchases if they're out of state. In-state customers pay sales tax. Thus, we get very few in-state sales. We also don't have an open shop and don't sell anything out of our place of business, as our business license is strictly for a mail-order business. We live in a small community, and the people that run the LQS's here are our friends. We can all make a business if we cooperate...

In our area (Denver) prices went up significantly as of June 1. I hear there is supposed to be another rise in prices in the fall. You are not the only one with sticker shock! My solution has been to go to the larger web sites selling fabric. They have all the name brands and I've never been disappointed.

Your not crazy! It is happening way to fast. Wal Mart, the ones that still have fabric (limited) went up over a $1 a yard and quilt stores are way over priced. :thumbup:

I know I have said this before but , feel I need to say it agian. Support those businesses you want to be there next year! My LQS is one of my favorite places, I will support it. Yes I have fewer dollars to spend and my purchases will be more calculated , but I will support my local economy before ... big Corp's that really could care less about if I shop there or not.

Amen Lori S

I don't know about France, but in the UK and in Ireland, there are import duties to pay on new cotton fabric, but these prices are way over those, as I can get fabrics online from the USA, pay the shipping and any duty, and it arrives here at sometimes half what it might be at my LQS. I know the shops have overheads, I used to have one, but even so I think the shops here inflate their prices because they are few and far between, so they have a monopoly in their own areas.

I am currently making a quilt for my DS and so far the top has cost me 2.00 for a yard of white at Walmart and a spool of thread that cost 3.50. The rest is denim cut from my and my DH's jeans. Last year I bought several kits that I have not even started yet those are for when I cant afford to buy fabric. We are not cheap just being real in a tuff world that we all are living in today. To the people who can afford to buy LQS fabrics, lucky you, but to the people who do what they can with wehat they can find, I salute you.

Im sure you would be glad not to buy fabric in the UK , nearly all cottons are around 10 pounds a metre , so about 16 dollars or so , I do take advantge of sales tho :)

no, your not cheap at all. i too am on a fixed income (disability) and i can't afford to buy fabric. if not for my angels, i wouldn't be sewing at all,. But i think fabric has gone ridiculously high. :thumbdown: :thumbdown: :thumbdown: :thumbdown:

I don't shop often at Joann's so I don't know how their prices are lately. I am pretty frugal so I only buy fabric when I need it for a particular project. I am not one to just see fabric and buy it...if I did that, it would probably never get used. And, when I am buying for a project I usually only buys the amt I need. I am very careful, you know....measure twice, cut once. I will still continue to buy at the LQS because I like the people there and I do not want them to go out of business.

I'm one of the lucky ones with a stash but I feel sorry for our new quilters. My guild trys to do small projects with FQ and use patterns with little waste.A piece 36x45 of warm & natural is $12.95! We have stores called Fabricland that sells a membership that gives a discount on many items and they also have members only sales so we keep anyone posted on this There are 2 quilt shops in the area and they give guild members a discount also both LQS donate some fabric if we are doing something charitable so we like to supportthem too.Everything has increased in price here so does our fabric but we still love our quilting!

I have been seeing higher prices too. Lately I have been buying fabric from sources that seel good quality fabric at a discount. But the only thing with that is that I can't get the latest fabrics, and sometimes the selection is not what I want. I guess I will have to buy judiciously from LQS...no more sprees, unless I win the lottery! :-D

Yes, I totally agree - I liked my fabric stash enough to buy it in the first place and it is all I have to work with right now.

Prices are higher, and fabric is a luxury not a necessity. Though everything is costing more, small shop owners are feeling the pinch as well as their customers. Many are trying to keep their stores open and are combatting larger retailers, not just Joanne's, but on line stores that have none of the overhead costs a small local shop has. Places like Keepsake Quilting can afford to have lower prices sometimes, but don't often. It is a sad reality that we are facing. Small shops won't be around for much longer as we tighten our belts and only shop our stashes. It's not our fault and not the shops fault, it is what it is. A sadness fills me as I see all this happening because I have grandchildren that won't have the experiences I have had with visiting a local shop and meeting up with friends there. My childrens generation lives in "make it convenient for me"...on line shopping....how sad and empty. They will tell stories of when they were little and there was actually a building where "grandma" use to take them and they could touch the fabrics and feel the colors and maybe there was a play area just for them while Mommy shopped. When we shop on line, we close another local quilt shop door....and the signs will read, "Sorry, we are closed forever, thanks for your patronage...happy quilting. Goodbye.

Prices go up for convenience, everyone wants to make a buck and pay a 'good' price and most things are being imported and not in the good sense. Sorry folks, but we are bringing it on ourselves by shopping the big discount places, buying online, wanting more variety of everything, buying more than we can afford or need, and wanting everything NOW instead of waiting. Off my soapbox :oops: :cry:

Please let me try to correct your incorrect impression of online stores if you will...

First, over 90% of the quilting fabric sold in the USA is sold by several large chains and several large online stores; notably JoAnne, Beverlys, Wal-mart, Ben Franklin, fabric.com (a subsidiary of Amazon.com), Keepsake Quilting, Hancocks, and a couple others.
This leaves the thousands of Mom&Pop and Mom&Mom LQS's and small online stores, i.e. "the independents" competing for the other 10% of the market. Many of the remaining online stores are run by people as an extension of their B&M stores.

Second, an online store has different, but not necessarily lower operating costs than a brick and mortar (B&M) store. While B&M stores are paying more for store-front rent in many cases, it's not that much cheaper than warehouse space rent. As far as wages go, there are additional and expensive skillsets needed to operate a web store, like web developers at anywhere from 60 to $150 an hour and a lot of specialty packaging and shipping equipment as well as lots of computer software, huge security checking fees, software licenses, hosting fees and other expenses not found in a B&M store. We also pay exactly the same business license and incorporation fees to the state and county as does JoAnne or Wal-mart.

Additionally, online stores pay higher merchant processing fees than B&M stores for credit card processing, typically 1% or more higher, and since literally all of our business is done by credit card, the total fees paid add up to a lot more expense.

If you operate a web store in a residential area, like we do, shipping costs are higher. We typically pay 15 to 30 cents more a yard for fabric delivery, delivered by the same UPS truck, as the quilt shops a few miles away, because our area isn't zoned commercial. One of the reasons we don't offer UPS or Fedex shipping is because of the huge residential area pickup fees charged by those carriers, that would have to be passed on to our customers.

If you are going to make a successful online business, it takes years of hard work before the search engines find you, and that's what drives most of your business. There's very little impulse buying in an online store, and there's no guilt in walking out of an online store like there is with walking out of a B&M, so for every sale in our store we see hundreds, even thousands of people "walk" through our store. People are also ruthless comparison shoppers online, much more so than in your B&M stores.

We've been building our online store for over 3 years now and have yet to take a dime out of it. We've also put much of our savings into it. Someday, if we don't burn out first, we might be able to supplement our fixed pension income, or make it successful enough to be able to sell the business. That's our hope.

Anyone who thinks they're going to get rich overnight by selling fabric on the internet is in for a rude awakening.

But at least Cindy gets her fabric cheap. :mrgreen: :mrgreen: