Originally Posted by Favorite Fabrics

Oh, please don't feel bad about this, memaw4! The whole "country of origin" issue is one that I'm particularly interested in. Cranston/VIP printed here in the US until about two years ago. I was fortunate enough to be able to tour their printing plant in Webster, Massachusetts about a year before they stopped printing there. When they made the decision to print overseas, I felt terrible about all the people who had worked there for decades, and were being laid off. Even one of the customer service people who usually handled my purchases was let go. Since I had met these folks in person it was particularly distressing. One of the managers at Cranston called me to give me the news personally, rather than let me find out about it some other way. (That tells you how very nice they are!)

I would LOVE to be able to buy and sell fabrics that are made in my own country. (This is not a comment AGAINST other countries; everyone needs to be able to make a living.) It's just that I would like to help keep jobs here in my own country if at all possible.

So I started to look for other companies who might still be printing fabrics here in the US. As far as I know, the only company who prints cotton quilting fabrics is Santee. Their fabrics are sold in JoAnn's; they are some of the oldies-but-goodies that you will find on the calico wall. And, though Santee prints here in the US, all the greige goods are still imported (probably from Pakistan, India, or China).

A lot of people have thought that Connecting Threads' fabrics are USA made. It's quite possible that a few years back, they were. (I really only started following this issue closely once Cranston closed their mill.) Because I had read here on the forum about CT's fabrics being USA made, I've been watching CT's site, and have seen how their product descriptions have changed from "cotton grown in North America" to... nothing about where the fabrics are sourced or printed.

As a retailer, the issue of where the fabric comes from is... disheartening. I confess that I do love the quality of the imported fabrics (though Cranston's was very nice too). But I am acutely aware that I'm contributing to the US trade deficit, but there is nothing that I can do about it.

As to fabrics that are made start-to-finish in the US, there is one company that sells them: http://www.nationaltextile.net/index.html

The thing is, they are all poly/cotton blends, though, and you know how we quilters greatly prefer cotton.

If you do e-mail CT to ask about the source of their fabrics, please share their answer with us here on the forum

:)

Originally Posted by wildyard

I ordered from QKO... Quilt Kits Online... a member of this board, and the fabrics were the best I have ever touched!!!
I have also ordered from Connecting Threads and Fabric.com and tho I have no complaints about their fabrics, they do not compare to those I got from QKO.

Originally Posted by BigDog

I love thousandsofbolts. And I love their cart where it tells you how many more yards you can add for the same shipping cost. Their shipping is unreasonably reasonable. I usually order a couple hundred $$ at a time, and their shipping only adds around .25 to .30 cents more per yard.

They are also very quick to let you know if they're short on something and ask if you still want the fabric. I recently elected to take a fabric even though it was 1 yard short of what I ordered. My refund was processed within hours, not days.

I also love fabric.com and I especially love their free shipping.

equilter is nice, but their shipping is high, imo.