Exactly,Lilrain!
I was just in Fabric Depot yesterday, used my 40% off coupon on a two yard cut of $10.49/yard fabric and got 35% off the other two fabrics that I got 1 yard of each.
Before discount total = $41.46
With discount total = $25.88
Saving = $15.58
I can live with that.

For those who have never been there, there's 1.5 acres of floor space under roof. If nothing else, I would go there for walking exercise and socialization with the wonderful family of employees. They will do whatever they can to help get you what you want...as do the on line people.
I can't say enough positive things about them.

They do know that if they ever thought of closing the business there would literally be many of us demonstrating in their parking lot! (I was actually told that by an employee yesterday!)

Got so lucky today....found a lovely piece of cotton at Thrift store. Paid 50 cents and it is 3 yards on the dot. So keep looking in those thrift stores.

lucky you i wish i lived in America

I also noticed the new fabric coming in is not 44 inches wide but 41 - 42 inches.

Sorry, I informed the list of this in August. And you MUST use your coupons and sales wisely. Happy Holidays

Wish I could fabric at that price

I don't know what you're buying, but all of the new fabrics we've ordered for the next 6 months are still 44/45" wide, except of course for batiks, which have been an inch or so narrower for years.

But the prices continue to rise, a result of the shortages of cotton, the cornering of the greige goods market by the Chinese, rising shipping costs, increasing demand, increasing wages in third world countries, etc.

Our wholesale prices have gone up, on average, by 50 cents a yard in the last year, and our shipping costs, to get the fabric in here, have gone up by about 10 cents a yard on average. The price increases for the next 6 months stuff coming are going up another 50 cents or so.

Most LQS's and online shops are being forced to raise prices or go out of business. One can't continue to lose money indefinitely. We try our best to hold down prices because we're trying to compete with big chain stores and big online entities like fabric.com (a subsidiary of Amazon) that have tremendous advantages in purchasing and shipping discounts, and also the big chain stores and their online divisions. When they finish running all the independents out of business, they'll be free to raise prices as much as they want to.

So basically, it turns out that many of us are running hobby businesses out here, if we didn't have other income we couldn't sell fabric. We certainly can't make a living at it.

With the US government drastically raising taxes on small businesses next year along with all the other price increases, look for thousands of LQS's and online shops to either raise prices, a lot, or go out of business next year or the year after, as well. And look for fabrics to increase in price exponentially starting in 2012 as the tax increases hit all levels of the supply chain.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the fact is, shoppers in the USA ain't seen nothing yet...

While we are stocking up on quilting fabric, it might be a good idea to buy extra cotton clothing-undershirts,briefs,sox, etc. According to one news article I read, cotton is going up 36% which means our undies will cost more.

I have been dismayed at the prices of fabrics for years. When i first started getting interested in fabrics it was just a couple dollars a yard...now...?? Outrageous with no end in site! I started looking through the clothes that my kids outgrow. Since most of my stuff is for function and not show quality~ I've been able to salvage quite a bit. Not only do I have memories but am adding to my already out of control stash.

A friend of mine has decided to switch to a new hobby because, since retiring, she can't afford to make quilts. She's now gonna learn to play the piano. Yes, she already has a piano & a friend who teaches.

The group that I quilt with at the local library go to Goodwill and buy clothes and fabric... we also have a little shop that benifits the domestic violence victims and we get old clothes and fabric there. Both are very reasonable and they are already prewahsed.

At the rate prices are going, might find quilters using silk in place of cotton.

We can at least help kkeep those little silk worms employed! :-P :thumbup:

i live in canada and i find the prices insane!! most things are marked at $15-$25/meter at fabricland and even more at my local quilt shop. BUT i have a rule. never buy anything full price. they usually have good sales, right now they have a huge 40% off sale. even that doesn't entice me though. right now they are going to be bringing in new fabrics so i found myself quite a lot of good deals on the clearance tables. they can be a pain to look through but the fabrics that were $15-20 last week are now $3/meter. and there are a lot of them too, nice ones. all their tartans went onto the clearance table too. so i scored big time. i spent about $200 @ $3-4/meter. (: i really want batiks though. i founds some online somewhere at a clearance price $2.33/y and got a few but the selection kindof sucked because they were so picked over. anyways, for those of us stuck in canada where everything costs an arm and a leg, be thrifty!! watch for things to go on sale at the end of the season and spend some time scrounging through the clearance stuff. it's well worth the extra time you have to spend looking to save so much.

Here in South Australia we pay anything from $12.00 - $25.00 per metre! The aussie $ is worth about the same as the american $ at the moment. Try getting a group together to go shopping, if you all buy fabric together you can ask for discount. We have done it here and saved around 20%. Our nearest quilting shop is over 50 klms away so we car pool aswell, so we save on fuel too.

You may not be interested in this, but I thought I would propose it anyway. If you buy white fabric like the Kona prepared for dying and some fabric paints and ink. Mix them in a spray bottle and make your own batik like fabric. I did it for the 12 grays I needed in my avatar. Only one gray was a true batik and that had to be sprayed to go with the others. My old moose avatar had painted sky and water. You can paint on them or stamp them before or after spraying. Throw salt on them for an interesting pattern or other objects for sun dying. The fabric is fairly cheap and the paints last for quite a while, or you can get together and buy them as a group. The ink I use is expensive now but I use it to add depth although not necessary. Everything gets heat set washed and dried. Prewashed sheets will work too or men's white shirts. Just a thought!

I keep seeing "the price of cotton is going up".

At the end of October, when I was driving through N. Carolina with a friend, I wondered why there was cotton still in the fields, being rained on. My friend explained that the Govt. pays some growers to let it rot in the fields so as to control the price of cotton. Has anyone else (in NC) heard about this, or understand why they wouldn't pick the so needed cotton they grow?

Thanks for the Links...

So true...that applies to so many other crops and I've personally could never understand it. If I went through all the trouble and cost of growing the stuff, I'd harvest it and store it. Heck, I'm getting paid to let it rot anyway - which is so disgusting in my mind. "Waste not, want not." In my way of thinking, a shortage means not enough was grown (as in this case) not a government created one.
Reminds me of when there was a sugar "shortage" and when the shortage was over the sugar bags were rock hard and the sugar had to be literally hammered loose. That comes from being stacked and stored in a warehouse for a long period of time. Wonderful!

Gov't also keeps price of cotton up so farmers won't change acres to growing other crops that bring in more money....esp. corn for ethnol use.

But I don't understand how this all computes. If the fabric company is raising their price .50/yd to the stores how does that equate to $2-$3 increase/yd to the consumer. I have a friend who works for a fabric company and she verified the cotton situation. It also makes me angry that the stores are raising the prices on all the fabrics - even the ones they have had for a long time. I can see myself spending the next year making UFO's and working with the flannel I bought at JA on Black Friday @ $1.29/yd.

Maybe it depends which store(s) you're talking about? If it's a chain store, then they might be playing games with the prices so that they can issue coupons of greater value. For example, JoAnns has had several 50% off coupons available within the past couple of weeks. Most commonly this year they've had only 40% coupons. So they will mark prices up, to compensate for the value of the coupon.

If it's small independent stores that you are talking about, then it would be common for them to double the wholesale cost to arrive at their retail price: a 50 cent increase on the wholesale level should play out to a $1 increase at retail.

It strikes me as unusual that a shop would mark up "old" fabrics, unless they are from a collection that's running. For instance, everybody knows that Kaufman's Kona cottons have gone up in price. It could be a bit awkward for a store to have some colors at one price and other colors at a different price.

At my LQS she does double the wholesale price to arrive at the retail price. She does not mark up fabric she already has, even if it is from Kaufman's Kona, and everyone knows that the new stuff just costs her more so she has to sell it for a higher price. So if the colors are close, ya go for the lower priced one!

I have not verified the price increase - I am basing that on postings on this site and info my friend, the fabric co. rep. I will be at my LQS on Monday for bunco so will check out their prices then. I did not look at anything at JA when I bought the flannel....I have a tendency to get a little testy at JA because of their store, the staff and their "sale" practices.

At that rate I couldn't afford to quilt. Thank heaven for my stash.

My SIL and I are planning at least one trip a year to the USA just to buy our fabric. Stocked up on notions in november. We got most of them on great sales 75% off what we pay here in Saskatchewan.