I just came from Joann's and they told me that while i was there.So by next year this time i'll be like you,and will have to drive a distance to a fabric store.I'll still have Eleanor Burns's store within 20 minutes,but she only sells quilting supplies.So if i need other things for sewing clothes and home decor i'll have to go out of my way also.Our Joann's is moving by next year as well,not closing,just moving,but further away.
Kathi

do you have any idea if the closing will include stores in the Knoxville Tennessee area? I sure hope not

Just what we need right after Walfart stopped selling fabric. The closest Hancocks is about 30 miles from me I very rarely get to go there it's not on DH's list of stops when we go that way. The few times I have been there I've been rather disappointed with the prices and etc but least I knew the store was there if I really needed anything and find it rather disheartening to hear I might now loose that store as well.

I've also noticed the yarn supply is way down in most stores too. Not sure if that is cause of the time of year it is or if stores are cutting back so letting the stock run out or what.

Why do you call it Walfart?

She calls it Walfart, because of her disatisfaction with them getting rid of their fabric dept.

I searched on line for a list of target stores for Hancock's and couldn't find anything. I guess the best bet is to just ask the store mgr. It seems that the lease has more to do with the closing than the actual sales revenue of the store.

Susan

So Susan are you renting a trailer and hitting the close out sale? Budster.

Bud,
I might need a U-Haul, LOL.
Susan

Today they sent me a form letter in response to my compliant and basically said closing my profit making store was best for the company, go figure.
Susan

I'm not a seamstress as the rest of you - and a newbie - but I,too, am disheartened/aggravated/ticked/etc with WM. I'm in NE Ok and *so far* our local WM still has fabric,but when they remodeled the store last fall, they messed it up so much my few projects are from accumulated materials of mine or my mom's stash. The store in Joplin MO where she gets fabric for quilt backs has dropped fabric.

Now with other stores closing, where are we supposed to purchase material for 'whatever'.....clothing, crafts, embroidery projects, etc? Not many of us can afford to drive 70 mi or so one way. We only have WM & Hobby Lobby. HL has nice material, but waaaayyy out of my price.

Any ideas on how to combat this?

I know on ebay there is a group of ladies that did a bulk buying group and they got a wholesale lic., I guess and they buy Michael Miller and Alexander Henry by the bolt and devide it up.

Also at our HL we can use the 40% off coupon on clearanced fabric. I usually use my coupon in their fabric dept and I wait every 2 weeks for the new one. You also can print one a day from their website.

In all honesty I have enought fabric that I could probably sew everyday for the next year and barely make a dent. My biggest concern with Hancock's closing is the notions. I get all of our embroidery stablizers, etc., there when it's 1/2 price. I buy my serger thread, sewing needles, bias tape, elastic, etc during their sales.

Susan (steping down from her soapbox today)

All the fabric stores are getting squeezed out! Why spend $50 on the materials and spend all that time sewing when you can go to walmart and buy it already made for 9.98! Even if purchasing the item is supporting slave labor in other countries, for some reason this is what consumers are pushing toward, (by the way, all of that was sarcasm). I'm starting to shop on-line, more and more. I discovered that http://www.denverfabrics.com has 1 cent fabric swatches so that I can take a look at the fabric before I choose to buy it. I haven't seen any other sites offering that yet, but I'm sure they will soon.
stitch-witch

Sewforangels, did you find out if the stores in Knoxville are closing? I am in Knoxville also.

Rebecca

In today's paper there was the ad that things are 40% off all sales are final and they only accept cash and credit card. Thought it was irony when there latest sales flyer arrived in the mail today.
Susan

So many rather harsh comments on the closing of Hancock's! And still so many will miss the stores even after the harsh comments. Ladies, this is what happens when you fail to support a store. They must have business to survive. Duh. As an example, Walmart was bad mouthed by one commenter - yet she sez she misses their fabric section. The fabric section has to be used or it will be eliminated. "My" Walmart still has a nice, thriving fabric department because customers use it. Very simple explanation, yes?

Where do you get fabrics now since you didn't support Hancock's? You go the way of the world and buy fabric by chance instead of by sight and by feel: ONLINE.

it's getting harder to find fabric stores. Ten years ago there were lots of them. Now JoAnn's is the only place around here that sells them.

Actually, ALL of Hancocks stores are closing. Over the years it has become increasingly difficult to find anything worth buying there. But, still is was there if you needed something that you could settle for.

Quiltsandquacks, it is not that simple that people did not support the store. There are many complicated factors that contributed to this.

I was always there to support the store when the store had what I wanted to buy. Over the last decade, in particular, Hancocks let ME down with the poor selection and the drastic move towards fleece inspired awfulness. I kept visiting the store and leaving empty handed until I quit going in as often and I quit buying much of anything. If they still had the quality of selection that they used to have, you can bet that I would be in there shopping! I can't buy what they do not offer. And, I do not wish to buy what they offered.

They have the fleece on at 80% right now. There is still an awful few tons of it left. It seems that I am not the only one who loathes that cheap stuff. It is my opinion that the overstocking of cheap fleece is one of the contributing factors in their demise.

But, there are many factors that have lead to this closing. There are the dynamics of corporate structure and changing demographics, to name but a couple. It is almost an old fashioned idea to assume that just because there are customers that there is success in business. Corporations are convoluted entities and do not always follow that path. Simple business models do not always apply anymore.

Add to those factors the fact that there is no production of the old fashioned fabrics that many of us grew up sewing with. The vendors cannot get those fabrics because they are not being produced anymore. We have much less land left for producing nice plant and animal based fibers in this world and we have an suffocating amount of old plastic jugs and petroleum based chemical that get made into "fabrics". THAT is what that fleece is made of, recycled plastic milk jugs. Ugh!!!

The Walmart in my community has recently begun to carry a few fabrics, again. For a simple cotton they have some product by Waverly, I think. It seems fairly decent for what it is.

Ultimately, Hancocks let ME down and quit selling the things that I needed to continue to sew. So, now they are gone.

I see that there are some newer types of sewing businesses that are opening up, but they seem to have a different direction. They seem to be located in more affluent parts of the burbs and cater to people who have money to come in, take classes on making things like hand bags and piecing, They have become a vendor for people with a lot of disposable income, but not a vendor where just real everyday sewing people will go in to buy a couple of yards of wool crepe or some nice cotton twill or swiss dot. They are more likely to offer you the chance, for a price, to come in and buy an independent pattern for a child garment and the "kit' to make it with. Then, you can spend $30 to make a kids tshirt that you could have gone over to Kohls and bought for five bucks. It is more like hobby sewing than like old fashioned sewing that was born of passion, creativity and necessity and supplied by numerous fabric stores in almost every small town.

Very eloquently stated, Gertie. Can't add a thing to it

I have been shopping at Hancock's for years. Or, maybe I should say I used to shop at Hancock's. I used to buy beautiful silk, wool, cottons, rayon, knits, etc.. It was my "go to" store. I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to start selling chairs, tables and other kinds of accessories in a fabric store. I realize it was a financial decision. It just turned out to be the wrong one.

There were many times, in the past decade, that I would go to Hancock's with great hope and walk out with nothing. My DH could not believe I went to a fabric store and didn't buy anything! I did buy a couple pieces of that awful fleece just to see what the attraction was. I like good fleece that doesn't pill the first time you wash it. Sewing with cheaply manufactured fabric is a waste of my time. There must have been enough of us that refused to buy what was offered.

I guess I agree with bossyvossy, but I got carried away and had to add a few things.

mmleach, your words could have been my own. Your experience is much like mine. I remember a time when all that was sold in a fabric store was real and good fabric and sewing supplies. Who ever bought all of that extra stuff at Hancocks? It was not even crafting supplies so much as cheap side tables and knick knacks. Why?Why?Why? They crippled themselves with very bad decisions. For a while I kept going back like one of Pavlov's dogs. I knew that, at one time, there was good stuff there and I kept going back expecting to find what used to be there, and it was not there anymore. Unlike the dog, I eventually learned that it was useless to keep going back. There was no reason to go.

Back in the late eighties? early nineties? maybe, So-Fro fabrics went out of business. They had stuck to their guns, selling mostly garment quality fabrics while Joann's moved forward with craft-quality cottons and some home decorating choices.

The Big Four pattern companies might have something to do with the end of garment sewing. I just made a simple dress for myself. I cut out the size indicated according to my measurements, and had to take in the body of the dress over two inches from the underarm to the hem. The sleeve wasn't too large, though. I sew for a living, but how would a novice have handled this? It would have been very frustrating, and this was labeled an easy pattern. Bad, bad sizing there. It costs more to make clothing than to buy it, now, as has been mentioned. There's also the aspect that if I go into Macy's and try on a dress, I know exactly how good or bad that style looks on me. I have had the experience of having a dress 70% done, trying it on...and thinking it was the most frumpy looking thing I'd ever pulled over my head. It was fixable, but how many people want to re-style a dress when it's over half-way done? It's an irony that now that I have a little more money to buy fabric, the only options locally are Joann's House O' Fleece and Walmart. I never figured out why Walmart fabric was considered desirable. Maybe other locations sold something that wasn't stiff with cheap printing, or so coarse it made good clothing for the concrete geese in your yard, and not much else. I worked at Walmart briefly, and the fabric department was the least profitable per square foot in the whole store. People wandered around there, but what they DIDN'T do was buy.

I guess I can't blame the stores for stocking what sells, and closing when even that becomes unprofitable.

I couldn't agree more c t . My mom was a seamstress, along with my aunt and grandmother in a sportswear factory on Kneeland Street in Boston. I grew up in the trade. What you say about the patterns is absolutely true. How disappointing to finish more than half a garment only to realize it's not going to fit. Happens to me over and over again. My last stint was a purchase about two months ago. I took my 8 yr. old granddaughter to Joann's, had her pick out some patterns and then some fabric. The patterns are not consistent at all and the fabric choices are bad. I just finished a little skirt for her the other night, had her try it on and I literally had to take it apart and add a pc in the back so it would fit and she's a tiny little thing. I'm not going to sew for her any longer. I am in the process of teaching her to sew but unfortunately we are going to head in the quilting direction and that type of thing. When she gets older if she wants to try a garment, then I will help but not until then will I buy another clothing pattern.

I have to echo what others have said about the fit of patterns. They do not seem to have much consistency between them and I think that many of them are badly drafted.

I have a considerable collection of printed patterns from the last century. Some of them are from the late '20's to the '80's. Most of them are a more narrow in cut and fit than are today's patterns, and they are much more tailored. Also, sleeves are drafted and set in to the armscyes at the proper angle, unlike most modern patterns that are drafted as if our arms were positioned straight out from our sides, like stick figures.

There are many more old fashioned techniques used such as understitching, two piece sleeves, eased hems, welted pockets, side zippers,etc

While I welcome the more simple shapes, I do not think that style and drafting of patterns has taken a good direction. They have sunken to the lowest common denominator. The fabrics at Hancocks were really scrapping bottom level, too.. Many of them were simply repulsive.

CT, I don't think that many young sewing people are able to recognize poor quality fabric when they see it. I think that much of what they are familiar with is low quality and they dont' know any difference.

I, too, have done some sewing for my grandchildren. Mostly, though, it is better to just buy the clothes. By the time you invest for fabric, pattern, thread,etc... it will cost you considerably. Unless, the fabric sourcing is there and what you are making is really something special, it is not worth it. I am, however, making pants for my tall skinny almost five year old grandson.. I am thinking that it probably makes more sense to buy him ready made and adapt the elastic to an adjustable elastic. That is especially true with anything with a zipper. By the time I buy fabric and zipper and elastic, it is already the price of a pair at the big box store. Never mind the time spent trying to find fabric to buy and the time spent sewing. I used to sew most of my kids clothes when they were that age. But, no more is it always a good idea.