A Fabric By Any Other Name

I wonder if Amazon will regret shutting down Fabric.com. I know they claimed it was losing money, but was that due to a poor business model or poor management? Any money-making proposition can be run into the ground by people who don’t understand customers’ needs and purchasing habits.

Walmart clearly wants to move into Amazon’s territory. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I discovered that Walmart is now doing order fulfillment with suppliers in much that same way that Amazon does. I’ve been able to find and order fabric through the Walmart website from Stylish Fabrics.

[Interestingly, it’s harder to find those same fabrics on Stylish Fabric’s website, although I am sure they are there. The search engine has useful filters; the issue seems to be inconsistencies in the product descriptions.]

Stylish Fabrics has a listing on Walmart’s website for rayon ponte roma fabric. They have an almost identical listing for the same fabric on their own website. I ordered two yards of this and it came yesterday.

This is a perfect example of why it is so hard to shop for fabric without being able to see and feel it in person. This fabric is described as a ponte roma. (Technically, I believe it is ponte de roma, but I suppose I’m asking for too much to have it named properly.) It is exactly the weight and blend I need to replicate that Liz Claiborne top. However, it in no way resembles the ponte from which I make all my Renee pants, and if I bought this intending to make a pair of Renee pants from it, I would be sorely disappointed. I think it would be better described as a rayon interlock knit than a ponte. Who gets to decide how a fabric is labelled and identified? The manufacturer? The supplier?

I did get Whitney’s list of her favorite online fabric stores and places to order specific fabrics as part of her TomKat Stitchery newsletter this week. That has been helpful for identifying good sources of quality fabric. Many online stores also offer swatches, but shopping for fabric that way is a time-consuming process.

I hate reinventing wheels that shouldn’t need to be reinvented, but at least I’ve found a good source for a nice, drapey, lightweight rayon doubleknit.

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I’m going to practice putting on and taking off my tire chains this afternoon. I’ve watched several videos because I always learn better by seeing an example. Hopefully, I will not need the chains. Michael Snyder, who does the Pacific Northwest Weather Watch videos on YouTube, said yesterday that the models are fluctuating too much to give any kind of accurate forecast for this week. He is hoping that they will converge and show some agreement by this afternoon. And the thing about driving over Snoqualmie Pass is that you really don’t know what the weather is like until you get there. That time I drove over in a snowstorm, it was 50 degrees and raining when we left Seattle. An hour later, at the summit, I was driving through four inches of snow.

First, though, I am teaching the A Little Somethin’ Jacket class at the quilt store. Some of the students from the scarf class have also signed up for this one, and I had to promise that I would talk about fitting and fabric in this class. My sense from teaching over the past year and a half is that people are searching for this information and wanting to make their own clothing, but they are coming up short.