TooterBelle

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.

Momsmurf

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:

bluekrissyspikes

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.

happyjan

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.

applique

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!

Lilyized

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?

Lilyized

Thanks for the Links...

Momsmurf

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!

Varigthrd

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.

newbiequilter

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.