Back from Sew Expo 2025

Whew! the past 10 days have been a whirlwind! I left last Monday and ended up driving the entire way to Seattle in one day. My original plan had been to spend Monday night in Spokane, but after looking at the weather forecast and seeing what was heading onshore, I chose to power through. That was a good decision even though I did drive through a bit of snow at the top of Snoqualmie Pass. A big windstorm came through Seattle Monday night and I would have been driving through that all across the state of Washington on Tuesday had I stuck with the original plan.

Bonus: I had all of Tuesday to do some fabric shopping in Seattle and Tacoma. More on that in a moment.

The sad news is that the day I left, the husband came home from getting straw bales from our farmer friend and found Dave dead in the chicken yard. There were no signs of foul play. I was not surprised. Dave was almost five years old and that is getting way up there in rooster years. As much as I will miss Dave, Little Roo now can step up and be the rooster in charge. I think he will do a good job. He was trained by his daddy, who was trained by his daddy.

RIP, Dave. You were the best rooster ever. May your genes live on.

After breakfast at the hotel on Tuesday morning, I headed to the nearest Joann Fabrics. To say that this store liquidation is a disaster is an understatement. The liquidation company, Great American (oh, the irony), put everything out on the sales floor. Literally. Some bolts were still wrapped in plastic, stacked randomly everywhere. All of the patterns had been pulled out of the pattern drawers and haphazardly plopped into cardboard boxes placed on top of the pattern drawers. (WHY?). The patterns were no longer sorted by brand or number, so it was impossible to find specific patterns. I threw out my list, because all the stores I went to were the same way.

[I hate stupidity and lack of common sense. If they had left all the patterns organized in the drawers, no doubt they would have been snapped up by shoppers.]

None of the sewing notions were left. No needles, nothing. All gone, and they had only been marked down by 25%. I said to the husband that this looked like a Joanns apocalypse. It reminded me of the run on toilet paper at Costco during the pandemic.

You know what was left in all the stores I visited? All the plastic crap from China that NO ONE WANTED. If Joanns had stuck to being a fabric (and yarn) store, they might have survived.

I did buy some bottomweight fabrics for some summer pants, but that was about it. Lines were long at both the cut counter and checkout. I feel for those poor employees.

I also made a stop at Pacific Fabrics. What a joy that was after the soul-sucking disappointment of Joann Fabrics. I’ll show photos of the fabrics I bought after I unpack everything and get organized.

Late Tuesday afternoon, I checked into the Airbnb near the fairgrounds and organized my class supplies for Wednesday’s class on sweater drafting. I have lots of thoughts about Sew Expo, too, but I’ll save those for tomorrow’s post.