*Will* There "Always be More Fabric?"

I'm feeling kinda 'Chicken Little-ish' today...

For a long time, I had a quote from Michael's Fabrics' Michael Bearman taped to my monitor to help dissuade me from making spur-of-the-moment fabric purchases:

'There will always be more fabric'.

But, now I'm beginning to wonder.

There are discussions about the demise of the Wal-Mart fabric section on both the Pattern Review boards and Stitcher's Guild, but Julie Culshaw of Timmel Fabrics had an interesting...and kind of scary...post on the Stitcher's Guild thread. In summary, she said that, since both fabric and garment manufacturing is heading overseas, fabric availability in North America is declining. Julie knows; she's in the fabric business. If the retailers are having difficulty finding fabric, it's apparent that the home sewing enthusiast could be faced with a real procurement problem in the (maybe not so distant) future. Despite the fact that fashion sewing is apparently enjoying a bit of a renewal (thank you, Project Runway!), there are still far too few of us sewing up our own garments to be anything remotely close to a market influence.

So, now I'm beginning to wonder if my anti-stashing mindset is not, after all, a Good Thing. Budget-wise, yeah, I can't continue buying fabric at the pace I was at a couple of years ago, when I first discovered the power of the Internet...but it is a little sobering to consider that it may not be there at some point in the future.

And my local Good Fabric Wal-Mart is going to go fabric-less also, although when I stopped by last night the clerk told me that they'd been told they'd be one of the last ones to close. So I don't know if I need to go in every week or so and buy up fabric (at $1/yd) for future costumes while I can still get it...

I did buy 3 pieces last night...two lengths of stretch lining, in blue and brown. The brown is for a stretch cotton twill jacket...doesn't match, but it won't clash too bad, considering it's the lining that's ok. The blue is...well, because stretch lining is hard to find and this is pretty nice. She even commented as she cut it that it was really nice stuff (Incidentally, I count lining as notions, so that didn't add to my 'fabric in' total'... ;) ) The third piece, a blue/white poly pinstripe, will be a tablecloth...and maybe something else; I just took what was left on the bolt, which was almost 3 yards. Maybe gauchos for DD...

I'll have to check in there periodically; stash moratorium or no stash moratorium...after all, what if yard goods really do go away?

Anyway, I'm *really* hoping that's just an acorn.