Fabric Center's Fabric School! Things to Know: Saving Salvages

We have a new installment of Fabric School: Things to Know! This time, we wanted to inform you of the importance of keeping your salvages once you've removed them from your raw yardage in the early stages of making a project. Many times a week, we have customers who come in looking for help locating a particular fabric but without any detailed information about the fabric beyond the colors and what it looks like.

By keeping your salvages, you keep a lot of good information about the fabric you have bought and make it easier for you and us to help locate a certain fabric when you run out or measure too short.

The first big piece of information that can be learned by keeping our salvages is who made it. This little piece of fabric real estate is a great way for manufacturers to get their name out there and stuck in your head. If you remember seeing "Riley Blake" on the edge of your fabric, you will remember them the next time around when you're out shopping. Plus, it helps you and us narrow down where it's located in the store and if it's something we can reorder.

The manufacturer Riley Blake is really good about including their name and pattern numbers at the bottom of their fabrics.

Riley Blake is also good about working with their designers to get them to include their brand name on the bottom of fabric salvages to further give you information about the fabric you purchased plus to help you to recognize each of their designers' unique design styles.

Another valuable piece of information is the line name and the pattern number. Now these are not always as consistently printed on salvages as manufacturer names. However, many designers and manufacturers are catching on to how important this information is to consumers who have run out of fabric, cut incorrectly or just plain love the print and want more! Some designer lines can have upwards of 20 different prints, all with the same colors and many with very similar designs. By having the pattern number, you and/or us can narrow down exactly which print you need.
Designers are also jumping on the fabric real estate bandwagon by including their brand name along with the line name they designed to get you, the consumer, to turn their name into a quilting household brand. 

Other pieces of information that are commonly included in salvages are fiber content and important cautions as to the fabrics' use limitations. These are important because a) it gives you an indication of how it needs to be laundered and if there is the potential for shrinking and b) legal safety information you need to know in order to decide if the fabric will work for your project.

Any natural fiber like cotton is susceptible to shrinkage the first time you wash it, but it can withstand higher temperatures in the wash making it a great option for baby blankets and burps. Cotton is also the worst at wrinkling, so if your fabric salvage indicates a high cotton fiber content, you know you will need to iron your final product after every wash. 

Another important line you will frequently see on raw fabric, like the kind you can find from us and other fabric stores, is "Do Not Use for Children's Sleepwear" or "Not Suitable for Children's Sleepwear". This is a legal safety precaution for the manufacturer as these fabrics have not been treated with fire repellant chemicals that are commonly applied to store bought children's pajamas. This does not mean that you cannot make children's pajamas from the fabric, but rather that you are now fully aware that by making your child pajamas from that particular fabric, your child will be more susceptible to burns if caught in a fire while wearing said pajamas. The manufacturer is no longer at liability if this should unfortunately happen; that line is there to let you be informed of this lack of fire safety. 

This next feature is not only information about the fabric you have just bought, but is a great feature to help you match colors if making a large project or quilt. Many fabric salvages will have each individual dye used in the print with a number or a cute, little design. Many times dyes, when close to one another in a print, can play off each other creating the illusion of a different color. By cutting off your salvages and just going off the pure dye colors on the end, you have a better chance of matching colors closer than if comparing the print as a whole. Plus, it allows you to only have to carry around a few small strips to each fabric store instead of each cut print on your journey to finding all your project's pieces. 

However, a word of caution about this: as was mentioned, sometimes colors play off each other when in close proximity on the overall print of the fabric. This means if you were to match a certain color by the dye samples on the salvage, you may actually find the color doesn't match the overall print. Depending on how important you find matching exact dye colors or overall general color schemes, you may want to take the cut yardage of the fabric you're matching instead to see if potential fabrics work with the overall color scheme. 

Unfortunately, you will find some fabrics where manufacturers print only some of these valuable information tidbits and others where they print nothing at all. In these cases, if you think there is even the slightest chance you will need more of the fabric or want to protect your bases in case you cut incorrectly, it is a good idea when purchasing the fabric to take a snippet of the fabric salvage and tape it to a piece of paper. Next to the sample, write down important information from the top of the bolt such as manufacturer, line name, pattern number, color number, fiber content, etc. That way, you have a document to refer to should the occasion arise where you need help finding more.

Not only will these tips help you be a more informed fabric shopper, but if the time should come where you need help finding a specific fabric or print, it allows us to more quickly and more accurately help you and your needs.

Is there something you would like to know more about the fabric or quilt shop industry? Send us an email or leave us a comment and we'd be happy to do some research and provide you with more installments of Fabric School!

Fabric School -- Things to Know: How Fabric is Ordered.

We recently had a conversation at a staff meeting where the staff came onto a topic of having informed customers. We roundly agreed that, to fairly help our customers as well as contribute to a happy quilting consumer culture in our area, it was imperative to keep our customers informed and knowledgable. The conversation quickly expanded to include ideas to keep you abreast of all sorts of valuable information that not only keeps you an educated quilt/fabric shopper but also a well-informed and skilled quilter/sewer.

This portion of our staff meeting resulted in us creating Fabric School! We've come to see the value we would be contributing to the quilting/sewing community here in Northern Utah as well as online all over the world. Not only will this help us better meet your needs and expectations, but will create a more relaxed and enjoyable fabric shopping experience for both of us!

For the first installment of Fabric School, we want you to be informed of how fabric is ordered and stocked. Many times a week, we have customers who comes in to our store with a sample of fabric they had previously bought weeks, months, sometimes even years ago and had miscalculated how much they needed or had made a mistake cutting and were in desperate need for more. I'm sure we've all been there and can empathize. 

While we do our best to help our customers find the exact print when this occurs, it's important to understand that...

1. we usually don't keep back stock of the majority of our products and 
2. we can't alway reorder fabric we sell in our store if it is sold out.

A lot of the time we do not have the foresight to know what will be popular with our customers and what will sit on our shelves a long time. If we were to backorder all that we offered, this would result in enormous expenses that would increase our prices. We absolutely do not want to do that; remember our motto is "Service, Selection, Savings".

As for the second point, the life of fabric is very much like high fashion; it operates around the seasons. Fabric manufacturers have fabrics designed usually a year ahead of when they plan on providing them in stores. We and all other fabric shops order fabric about a season ahead of when it will be available to sell. This means that, seeing as how Christmas prints usually become available for sale in the middle of the summer, designers were creating the patterns for this Christmas last summer. Sales representatives from the various fabric manufacturers visited our store and we ordered these prints in the fall of last year, a whole season before they will be available on our shelves. 

These are very springy prints, but we got them in our store back in November!  See, a whole season ahead to give you time to make your spring projects.

The reason for this is that fabric manufacturers require a set number of yardage they need to print in order to supply the demand that was created when fabric stores ordered. This cuts down on their costs (which allows their fabrics to be priced lower for you, yay!) as well as the possibility for vast amounts of unsold fabric left on their hands that did not meet as much public acceptance (a nice way to say the fabric was ugly). For us and for our customers, that means there usually aren't any extra bolts to order once we run out of a certain print or fabric line. Additionally, fabric manufacturers want to be on the cusp of what is popular and to creatively expand what they offer to consumers. Because of this they rarely reprint old fabric lines. 

What we would like you to take away from this information is that, while we will thoroughly search through our cabinets and shelves for the print you are short on, there comes a time when a fabric is simply done and gone. As an informed consumer, this will help you to recognize our limitations, keep your expectations reasonable and understand that sometimes miracles just are meant to happen.

This fun comic was found on pickledish.com and explains why the fabric you are looking for is sold out: it's because Mrs. Bobbin takes it all! 

Should the possibility arise that you need more of a certain print and we are sold out, there are a few manufacturers who make it a little easier to reorder from; they will sometimes print a little extra for cases just like this. These manufacturers include Riley Blake, Springs and occasionally Moda. If what you are looking for falls within these manufacturers, we are happy to take your information and do some investigating to see if it is still available to order. Have patience with us as this usually includes  finding the fabric, determining if it is available or not, ordering it and having it shipped to our store. It may take awhile but we will be in touch with you about what we find.

We hope you are as excited as we are about Fabric School and the wonderful opportunities it can provide. Do you have something you'd like to know about and which you'd like to see featured on Fabric School? Leave us a comment or send us a message!