I know some of you hate wal mart but...

I think it is fine to shop at those stores such as joanns or hancock. I make things from patchwork clothes, to business attire, to evening wear, pillows, scarfs, purses...etc. anything under the sun. I need to shop at those stores as well. But for things like a patchwork scarf-it is fesable to buy cord at the thrift stores. and so on. I was just making a statement.

 

While I totally agree that people should support recylcling and mom-and-pop's as much as possible, (especially people who are sewing for their own or their friends' wardrobes) I feel it would be an unkindness both to my customers and my hard work if I recycled fabric in my patchwork. Re-fitting cords is one thing (although for the sake of my sanity and my machine's well-being, I pretty much always start from scratch and leave refits to newbs) but cutting up used, recycled, already worn and washed garments, and putting the fabric into an article of clothing that's highly stressed and patchworked (and, moreover, that I'm sometimes spending 20+ hours on, charging $200+ for) is a disservice to my customers who are paying for a long-lasting durable art garment.
Just my two cents. I'm all for recycling, like I said, but there's a time and a place for new fabric, and it's high end patchwork.

 

You're right, they wouldn't have a reason to exist if folks shopped exclusively at more local shops.

What a lot of people don't seem to realize is that places like WalMart or Target or whatever else didn't one day start as a big box store, these sorts of stores all started as a single, mom n pop shop. To be completely anti=chain stores, you're limiting your shopping. Anyone who starts a business and manages success from it will likely open a second location in order to bring in more customers, and before you know it, if there's enough success, you've got yourself a whole new chain of stores. It's a cycle; if walmart were to shut down because everyone went to their mom n pop shops, then these little shops would have huge amounts of traffic, and before ya know it, any few of these little shops over the course of time end up just like your walmarts.

Agreed. I recycle what I can, including clothing items, but when making large quantities of items, in these instances recycling clothes just isn't financially possible.

I love being able to undo a sweater and reknit it, but in some cases, buying a few balls of yarn from my local Michaels or Walmart is more cost effective for me than buying a sweater from a thrift store to reknit. Plus the end product 90% of the time looks much better with new materials, which is what I want if I plan to resell it.

And I'm not knocking it, I totally agree with you. Sometimes it's better to be able to depend on recycled materials, but often it's not something that one can depend on when making large or marketable amounts of crafts. It's possible, but usually using newer materials is better.

And at the risk of sounding like a complete sell out, if buying a bag of yarn at WalMart vs my local yarn shop is going to save me a dollar or two, then off to WalMart I'll go. With the quantities of things I do, getting the most out a dollar for my raw materials is just financially sound.

 

lol i knew when i posted it that i would get people saying not to shop there and such... i just wanted everyone to know there was a good deal goin on, btw it is all 50% off now and will go down to 75% off soon

only problem is, i live in an army town, mom and pop shops do horrible here... so theres not many at all. if someone wants fabric that is organic or such i will make the effort to get it but in all reality it is too convenient and more affordable for me to shop at chains since a lot of mom and pop stores have to charge more to make up for the fact that they get less traffic, no one will ever get people to stop shopping at big chains and i know it is wrong for me to be against how wal mart treats people and shop there anyways but i have to go where i can afford things, and i know of mom and pop companies that are shitty to work for who treat their employees like crap.... you can never fully win in this situation

with thrift shops, i buy there when i can but they never have enough for me in one trip to do all the work i need to do, so when i do go out there once a week, i still have to hit up the fabric shop...........

 

I know alot of mamas who specifiy when using vintage fabrics or used reconstructed garments. It's just the name of their game I guess...enviornmentally couture.....


and really phunky i can't believe wal-mart is giving up on the fabric..people mustn't be buying it there i would guess...

 

Actually, they annually make a little more on fabric than Jo-Ann's does. But considering how much they make in every other department (and how much they stand to make selling refrigerators, dishwasher, washer/dryers, stoves, etc.) it's still not much. And it requires more man hours to run the department, since more of their merch needs to be cut and recovered. Honestly, I've been expecting it for a while (even before I'd heard about it a few months ago) because while we were OTR last year we did a lot of Wal-Mart hopping, sleeping in their lots and such. I noticed a definite move away from it, where the fabric/crafts section in the newer stores always seems just tacked on and stuck in. Plus they've gotten a lot smaller.

I think in a lot of ways it'll be a good thing, because it will bring more fabric customers back into the other stores, and as a result those stores will do better business and improve their goods and service.

 

Man I am glad I live in California. The thrift shops here are ripe with TONS of fabric, some new, some vintage, (some crap, but if you know your fabrics, it all works out) I often wonder if Hancock fabrics or Joanns donates to them. and people toss plus sized clothes that have never been worn, tags still on em that I KNOW cost a fortune, they are made of great fabrics. (not all recycled clothing is made from old clothes) I've been to the walmart fabric section and I can say I wasnt impressed with the fabrics. Alot of them you see too often, or they are from "a country of unknown origin" wtf? I end up putting that energy into my clothing and I don't like it. I'd much rather find some beautiful fabric at a mom and pop store that specializes in good quality, hard to find fabrics, I know they pay the employees well, and are a benefit to the community. But then again, I do have lots of places like that around here, its too bad that all you have to shop at is a wall mart. Hopefully with the walmart stopping the fabric, you'll get some better goodies coming into your town

 

Pharoah, you're very lucky

Not many thrift stores - at least where I live - does one manage to score crafty raw materials like fabric or yarn or beads etc. I have rummaged through my local stores and picked up some ugly sweaters with nice yarn that I've undone and reknit; in the last 5 years or so that I've really been knitting, though, I've only (maybe) found actual balls of yarn like half a dozen times at best.... even more rarely beads, and never fabric.

 

wal mart is the pits. Because their policies generally suck but their prices are very good. I have only found their fabrics to be of inferior quality. Sometimes stuff hold up but their calicos are like paper thin. I would rather pay the extra $$ for a higher quality fabric and even organic or hemp. I know it's the only fabric some people have access to, but I wouldn't buy handmade duds from someone if i knew beforehand the fabric was from wal-mart.

 

I'll second that. I would love to see more options.
I don't often find usuable fabric at thrift stores--and even then it's usually not enough to do much with.

 

Alright, well, that being said, I hope it's ok with everyone that I close this thread, before it gets sidetracked from the original topic and becomes a Wal Mart bashing thread! They're not eliminating their fabrics, according to this article, so no worries.