I have such a lovely to-do sewing pattern project list stored in my phone with the fabric and notions required next to each one. I know JoAnns doesn’t have the best quality cotton or flannel fabrics, but their apparel fabrics seem pretty good. I was looking forward to going after work, but sigh, both bolts of fabric I wanted for S2061 had defects on them. One of the bolts of twill fabric had slubs running down the fabric in a certain spot, probably for the entire bolt 
So then I chose my second-choice twill fabric instead. But after my fabric got cut, I inspected it for defects, and found 2 decent sized pills that I feared would end up becoming tiny holes after a few washes so I left the fabric behind with the cutter (she cheerfully said “no problem”) and only bought the 1.5″ elastic I would need for the pants. Also, sadly, none of the other apparel fabrics caught my eye for any of my other garment projects on my list.
Bummer. There are no quilt shops in my town, and the one in the next town over closed. I’ve stayed away from fabric.com due to a lot of online chit-chat about how their customer service is not great, but then there are many who have not had any problems with fabric.com I may need to give them a try again (I have had 3 positive experiences with them, including 1 return simply because I didn’t like the fabric in person, but that was a couple of years back) and hope for the best. I think I will plan to order some apparel fabric swatches from them, assuming that is, they do swatches for their apparel fabrics.
Anyone have any suggestions for other online fabric shops that have a big apparel fabric selection?
Filed under: Craft Supplies, Sewing
What a bummer you couldn’t find anything suitable for your pattern but I’m sure you will online. Just that perhaps you would like to “feel” the fabric before purchasing and that’s kind of impossible when doing online fabric shopping. Swatches are the way to go, hopefully they have that option available!
Sorry Im not able to help with the suggestions for online apparel fabric shops. I wish you success on your search!
(Forgot to add) … weeeheeeee…. new phone!!!! lol ;-D
ps (just bugging you ;-D)
@BoS – yes new phone! fancy! I think I got it back in October-ish? Sadly my nearly 9 year old cell phone (!!!) finally started to die, the battery had been iffy for quite some time but the SIM card finally started failing. My smart phone is crazy, I figured I might as well catch up with the 21st century and get the smartphone! I have a basic “data usage” plan or something, and I’m still only using like 25% each month of what I’ve been alotted
Yes, fabric.com does have swatches for apparel fabrics but earlier I had a very frustrating online customer service “chat” with one of their reps — basically the rep was very unhelpful and was not knowledgable. It just reinforces the fact that I shouldn’t shop there — I’ve read lots of gossip online about how hit or miss their customer service has been — some flickr peeps have reported (and shown pictures) of receiving dirty fabric and having their fabrics stuffed in a garbage bags which is then packed in a box.