The Future of Fabric at Joanns

Joann Fabrics needs a miracle. I don’t think the company is going to survive. I was looking at the Customer FAQ on the restructuring page of Joann’s website, and this bullet point leaped out:

Gordon Brothers has indicated that it intends to pursue a liquidation of the Company and conduct going-out-of-business sales at all store locations.

Gordon Brothers is currently the only interested buyer, in what is referred to as the “stalking horse” position. Other, better offers are being pursued, but it appears that Gordon Brothers is the buyer of last (only?) resort. Note that the sale to Gordon Brothers has not been completed.

We shall see what happens. I will be a bit sad not to have Joann Fabrics as a resource, although one could argue that they haven’t been a good resource for several years because they just don’t carry anything worth buying anymore.

In an unrelated-but-also-interesting twist, I tried to order two lengths of Minerva Exclusive Crushed Velvet a week ago. This is the fabric from which I made my Christmas dress, and I thought to use it again for my 2025 dress. I believe that Minerva prints a lot of their fabrics on demand, which is what allows them to offer such a huge selection. I received an e-mail from them yesterday letting me know that the mill does not know when they will be able to fulfill this order and how did I want to proceed? I opted to cancel the order. Is the mill overwhelmed with orders? Is something else going on? Inquiring minds and all that.

I started a project yesterday that has been languishing in the queue for almost a year. I want to make a byAnnie A Place for Everything Tote:

I want something to hold all of my supplies when I travel. Yesterday afternoon, I sandwiched and quilted the fabric for the body of the case. The correct color thread was already in the Q20 and it seemed like a good time to get this done.

Unfortunately, I need a few more supplies to proceed. This project requires an insane number of zippers, and rather than cut down pre-made zippers, I want to use zipper tape. I don’t think anyone in Kalispell carries the byAnnie zipper tape, at least not in all the colors.

After that quilting was done, I used the same color thread to make another class sample for the ruler class. Sometimes quilters learn better with training wheels. Rather than trying to quilt a design from scratch, it helps to practice quilting around a printed design. Quilters call these “cheater prints.”

This fabric is from one of the Laundry Basket Quilts lines.

Yesterday was a brilliantly sunny day. I took this photo when I went out to get the mail. The mountains have on their winter finery. This view is looking south down our road.

As I was standing at the mailbox, a truck came around the corner at the north edge of our property. After that corner, you can see that there is quite a long straight stretch. A red Mustang came screaming out from behind the truck, which apparently wasn’t going fast enough for the driver of the Mustang. I jumped back into the snowbank to get off the road. The Mustang sped past me and I watched it fishtail down the icy road. I doubt the car had snow tires or any extra weight in the back end.

The neighboring fire district line is about two miles down the road. When the husband sees this kind of stuff, he always says that he hopes the driver waits to wreck the car until they are in Bigfork’s district.