Fabric Shopping

I just got back from shopping for fabric and a few things ran through my mind as I was perusing the (sometimes overwhelming selection of) fabric: I haven’t gone fabric shopping in months; I love fabric; and there isn’t much NEW stuff out there, as in I saw a lot of reproductions from previous runs like Denyse Schmidt’s Flea Market Fancy and Sandy Gervais’s Frolic, two fabulous lines, don’t get me wrong, but not new.

These personal pontifications became sad realizations after talking to the store owner who said, quite frankly, that many companies just aren’t coming up with much new stuff lately because of rising costs. She also confirmed my suspicions about the reproductions of lines from a few years ago. However, the concerning part is that many of the fabric producers aren’t getting enough orders to send to the printers, so there’s an even further delay in new stuff getting to market. Now, for someone like me who prefers cotton prints from Moda, Alexander Henry or Robert Kaufman (including Kona solids) for quality reasons, I have some mixed feelings about reprints. It’s great to get prints that you might have wanted but missed out on, but at the same time, part of the fun of shopping is finding something new to covet.

However, I did not leave the fabric shop empty handed, but found material for at least four projects and Christmas gifts. Now I just need to find a pattern for a chef’s hat…