I am one who does NOT buy party supplies, go to parties where WM assumes everyone uses this stuff, nor do I do scrapbooking. I do sew & sew allot. I just spent over $100.00 yesterday at JoAnn's. With todays crappy economy most of us buy things that we can get more than one times use out of & that ain't throw-away party supplies. If they wanted to add these items to their shelves so be it, but they should have never removed the fabric.

Here's a true example of WM's wonderful community charity:
A WM Rep came to the motorcycle club my huz belongs to several years ago. The club is non-profit & does charity for children who have illiness. They donate to any other organization as long as they get some kind of recognition. The club has raised & donated many thousands of dollars over the years. The club's walls are lined with plaques & trophies for donations. WM was asking the club (which has around 65 members) to donate to them, so they could take that money & donate it to a local family who had a terminal child. The club asked if they did this would the club get any recognition. The answer was NO, but WM would. We were shocked that such a big company would consider such a thing. The club told this person we don't do that, but would donate directly to the family. The rep refused to give the club the families name & address. I've heard more stores like this. WM is all about image.

One of the things I hate the most about WM...is to walk into the store & hear a dept of employees "chanting" & clapping. Nothing like a good brain washing to get your day started. I have relatives that work there & they hate this.

If K-Mart sold fabric I bet most of us would flock to them to not only buy fabrics, but other items as well. At least K-Mart doesn't make their employees "chant" every day.

Tried and got a cracker box answer that meant nothing. I dont think they even read their emails.

From what I have read, Walmart is still one of the companies still making money in this economy. We may tell them we will quit buying there when the fabric dept goes, but the profits still go up. How many times a day does someone buy several hundred dollars of fabric? They make a lot more money selling TVs, clothes, food, drugs, etc. They say they are community oriented, but maybe they see Habitat for Humanity or the Red Cross as more valuable. They have been threatened with boycotts from quilters for years, and it hasn't changed the bottom line for them. They are not our friends, they are corporate America.

In light of the above, I wanted to relay a story about our local Starbucks. Starbucks has a program where they will pay local charitable organizations $10 per hour for every hour one of their Starbuck's employees volunteers at some function of the charitable organization. We did that with them last year and it was a great success. And the kicker: Starbucks does NOT want their name mentioned anywhere during the event. They realize that the event is about the CHARITY, not about STARBUCKS. That's class, and that's the way it ought to be.

I used to work at K-Mart. No chanting I promise:> But, there were some other major dislikes I had with the company. Though, I bet most employees have some issues with their employer;>

There have been some excellent suggestions given. I never thought about asking stores such as K Mart and Target if they might consider carrying fabric. That would be worth a try, especially if they knew there was a whole community of quilters looking for a good source of affordable fabric. Someone mentioned Hobby Lobby, and I agree, they have very good fabric. Some is quilt grade fabric for your nicer quilts, while they also carry more moderate priced fabric. Hobby Lobby should be commended for continuing to carry fabric along with other crafts and hobby items. Their fabric is priced lower than JoAnn's, even without a sale. We have one HL store here in Pensacola, and I would go to it more were it on my side of town. But they are a great store, and I have bought a lot of fabric from them over the years. I think we would be wise to let the corporate office of Hobby Lobby know how much we appreciate their carrying fabric, as well as the management in our local Hobby Lobby stores. Sometimes we don't appreciate these things enough until we don't have them, such as what happened with Walmart.

I went to JoAnn's about a month ago and was so angry that they raised their prices on fabric! Of course Wal-Mart quit selling fabric and JoAnn's knows they are the only game in town. What is a quilter to do?!

Many of us, whom live rural, are very limited to what stores are available. In my area within 112 miles we have WM, K-Mart & Lowes. It's 20 miles to JoAnn's. NO Hobby Lobby & Michales does not carry fabric. Now that we're left with JoAnn's I'm sure prices will go up.

They are still making money, but according to this thread http://www.quiltingboard.com/t-66179-1.htm they aren't doing as well as they did in the past. You bet it would make a difference if quilters boycotted. They problem is there aren't enough of us that don't shop there.

We don't have Hobby Lobby either. There is only one that I know of in the whole state of Idaho.