Close to Nowhere - Linda Jones


Thursday, April 12, 2007
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Close to Nowhere
By Linda Jones

It’s hard to buy fabric nowadays

The season of Lent is over and now I can buy fabric again.

I only fell off the wagon one time during Lent. For some insane reason, I thought I could go fabric shopping in Memphis with my daughter and her friend for them to start on quilts and not get any fabric at all for me.

I did okay the first two quilt shops we went in -- but the third one was where my downfall happened -- they had Olivia fabric.

Olivia is this very “sophisticated” little girl pig who loves ballet, dressing up, opera, her cat Edwin and her dog, whose name I seem to have forgotten.

I’ve read the Olivia stories to my granddaughters for many years now and when I saw the fabric with Olivia and her red sunglasses, well, I really didn’t fall off the wagon, I jumped with both feet! I bought six fat quarters! (Old quilter’s joke -- a fat quarter is not a body part!)

Easter is past now and Lent is over and once again, I can buy fabric. The only problem is that fabric is harder to buy than it used to be.

There are quite a few fabric and quilt shops in Memphis, but I don’t live there. The very nice fabric store in Oxford is for sale, as the owner is getting older and is not in great health anymore. But I don’t live in Oxford either, although it’s not as painful to go to Oxford as it is Memphis.

Now, one of the few reliable places to buy fabric locally is no longer going to sell fabric. It’s no longer “cost effective” to sell fabric for Wal-Mart, so they are discontinuing the fabric department, according to staff associates. The Wal-Mart in Olive Branch has already closed their fabric department and the ladies there say within three years all the Wal-Marts will have closed their fabric departments out.

It’s not “cost effective” -- which means that what customers want to buy it not as important as how much money you make in the long run.

There are many rural communities around the South where Wal-Mart is the only place that sells fabric. What are those of us who live in those communities supposed to do?

My youngest granddaughter is fascinated with weaving -- maybe I can encourage that habit and before much longer she can weave me all the fabric I need? Nah, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Quilting is again one of the fastest growing “hobbies” in the country. There are shows popping up all over DIY television on sewing clothing and home furnishings -- all of this requires one very important item -- fabric! But selling fabric is not “cost effective” for some stores. So, where are the thousands of us who sew supposed to get fabric?

Maybe having Gremlin get busy weaving is not such a bad idea after all?

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