While I’d rather be able to get everything I need locally at a decent price, it’s just not possible, so I shop online a lot. I used to shop a lot at Hancock’s of Paducah, but their shipping is kind of high depending on the size of your order, their “new and improved” website is dog slow and painful to use and calling to place an order isn’t always the most pleasant or easy experience either. Backorders have always been a problem with Hancocks as well, since they can never tell you when (or if) the backordered item might show up. I’ve shopped at Jinny Beyer’s site a few times over the years, but the last experience was soooo painful and required two phone calls and at least that many emails that I won’t do it again unless I’m desperate.

Lately I’ve discovered some new sites, some great, some not so good. I’ll list below some of my recent online shopping destinations (and some old faves) and my experiences with them, in no particular order:

Quilting Warehouse—I really like this place. The online shop is easy to use, well laid out, and has great prices from what I’ve seen so far. I discovered it while searching for the cheapest prices on fusible Velcro by the box. Not only are their prices good, they don’t kill you on shipping, and add nothing for handling at all. A small-to-medium box with two boxes of 15 feet of Velcro each, and two small packages of needles only cost $41.60 for product and $3.85 for shipping. They shipped my order within two days of receiving it, and it was in my hands in a week. Definitely a keeper.

eQuilter—Not that this is a recent find, and I’m sure you all have shopped here before. Great for fabric shopping, shipping costs are average, but it took them six days to ship my last order which was too long IMO. I do like their virtual design wall where I can see fabrics together before choosing which ones to buy. However, I wish that they would list the manufacturers names and style numbers with the fabrics in the shop, but that’s one of my giant pet peeves with many online fabric retailers. It would make it so much easier to shop for a certain fabric when you have that information in hand, if the shops would note it in the item name or description.

Amethyst Quilts—Not much to say about this place since my order never was completed. I was searching for a certain fabric and found it here through the Quilt Shops Search Engine, only to have the shop email me the day after I placed my order to say they didn’t have the fabric after all. Sad, very sad. That’s another of my huge pet peeves right there. Online shops that show fabrics and products that they don’t have in the store and don’t keep their stock levels current are really frustrating and definitely don’t inspire me to go back. The only thing is, it seems like all 210 online quilt shops that are designed and programmed by the folks that run the Search Engine look about the same; I might not even realize it if I ran across this same shop again a year down the road during another fabric hunt until after I’d placed my order for something else they might not have.

Thread and More—This one’s a mixed bag. The first time I ordered, my order was shipped the next day, and the shipping fee seemed average. The second time, it took them two weeks to ship my order out, and they charged me $7.99 shipping and $1.50 handling for a teeny tiny little Priority Mail box that cost them $4.80 to mail. The product total was only $19.92, so $7.99 was a bit steep to begin with but to add insult to injury, there was no “packaging” to speak of that would have cost them a huge amount of money or extra time. The four packages of finger cots and four packs of John James needles I ordered were inside a plastic zip top bag with the receipt, and the box was free from the Postal Service! I’m not too impressed with this place after the second go round.

Sewing Supply Warehouse—I can’t say enough good things about the service here. I buy Sulky thread from them, because they have the cheapest price that I’ve found on the ‘Net at $2.09 per spool. They ship orders out the next day for an average shipping cost without extra handling fees, and their online shop is powered by Yahoo!; nothing stellar, but very usable and gets the job done without glitches. The only complaint that I have is that they don’t carry more of the items that are on my “need to order” list. How simple life could be if they did.

Soft Expressions—I’ve been ordering from this site for years, so it’s not a recent find, but worthy of inclusion here. They have great prices, mostly much lower than retail and other sites. Timely shipping, usually just two days from order placement to shipment, with slightly lower than average shipping fees and no extra handling charges. The site is not laid out the best, but it is functional and gets the job done.

There you have it, almost all the online sites I’ve shopped at recently. I’m sure I’ve left out a couple of favorites that I’ve not visited recently. I can think of Red Rock Threads off the top of my head; always great service with extra reasonable shipping rates, probably some of the lowest in the business actually. I’m sure more sites will come to me as soon as I hit “Publish.”

Your Voice: Where do you turn when your LQS doesn’t have what you need for your latest quilting project? What are your favorite online shopping haunts, and how do they stack up when it comes to the real nitty gritty of it all with shipping times, costs and handling fees?

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Where do you buy most of your quilting supplies? Do you have a favorite local quilt shop? Here’s my weird situation:

There were two choices for brick and mortar shops close to Stuttgart, the Arts & Crafts shop on the Army post, and a German shop in town. The Arts & Crafts shop isn’t mainly a quilt shop, so the selection is limited to whatever the current staff thinks needs to be there or whatever the current quilting teachers need for their classes.

In times past, there were dedicated quilters on staff and teaching classes (including myself, at times) at the Arts & Crafts, so the selection was fairly good at those times. Recently though, there haven’t been many (or any) quilters on staff, so the quilting department has gone back to basics. It is hard for people who don’t quilt to know what we quilters want. Even at the good times, there were still items they didn’t carry that I needed, the shop being as small and multi-faceted as it is.

Shopping for quilt supplies in German stores is typically more expensive, as many of the products and fabric come from the United States, and the current value of the Dollar against the Euro makes it even worse. Sometimes if I needed something right away, I would purchase it at the German store, or if I was buying something that was made here in Europe of course, since it would likely be cheaper to buy it here.

The story here in Heidelberg hasn’t changed much, though the Army Arts & Crafts shop has a better selection of quilting supplies here than the one in Stuttgart. The fabric selection is better here it seems, and the shop here has had more of what I’ve been looking for since we moved than the shop in Stuttgart has had over the course of the last couple of years. The shop in Heidelberg seems more like a real dedicated quilt shop, even though it caters to scrapbookers, framers, knitters, and other crafters as well as quilters.

As for knowledgeable staff, the Army shops are about the same; it’s the luck of the draw, and it depends on who is working there when you need help. Of the questions I ask these days, some get answered well, some don’t. I actually helped a beginner quilter in the shop myself one day, since the staff couldn’t. Most of the staff do try their best to be helpful though. In the German shop in Stuttgart, of course, the owner quilts and the staff all quilt, so you get a better pool of knowledge to begin with, and they’re always friendly and glad to see you.

Even with two shops when I was in Stuttgart, the American one and the German one, I still mail ordered something quilt related once every couple of weeks on average, just like I’m doing here now in Heidelberg. I’d love to be able to support the LQS’s, whether American or German, but if they don’t carry what I want, it’s just not possible. Even if the shop has the products I’m looking for, the other factor is the price of the goods.

The sad part is that for the American shops on the Army posts, shipping is a huge burden. The shops typically can’t sell goods at the suggested retail prices because they lose so much money on shipping costs to get the products here in the first place, and customers question the shop when their prices are slightly more than suggested retail, and say that they can get it online cheaper. I don’t because I know how it all works for the shop, but some do. Sure, if I’m going to order something online, I’ll pay shipping too to get it here, but if the order is big enough from just one online source, the products will still be cheaper, even taking shipping costs on the order into account.

There’s always the price of gas these days to consider as well. ITMan picks up our mail in the building right across from his office, so there’s no gas money being spent to shop online, even though the postman doesn’t bring the box to my door. The Army shop is about 20 miles from my house one way, so in my car it costs me nearly $8.00 for a round trip to and from the shop. (As an aside, that’s not a complaint about the price of gas, it’s just a fact to consider in the current discussion. I adore my car, and I knew what I was getting into when I ordered it.) On the other hand, if quilters and crafters don’t support the Army shop, it might not be there very long, and I know there are shops in the States having trouble, and even closing their doors.

Your Voice: Where do you purchase your quilting supplies? Do you have a fabulous local quilt shop? What’s the best thing about it? Are you lucky enough to have more than one LQS in your area? Are they having to cut back on stock in your area due to the present economy? Do you still have to mail order supplies? Next time: Online sources!

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I’m back in my Bookmarks folder today to bring you another Melange on this happy Monday. More quilting bookmarks:

StenSource International, Inc.—I found this place in 2004 when they had a booth at the Houston show. Home of the Creative Iron, fusible, laser cut fabric appliqués. I’ve yet to make something with these appliqués, but it’s on my list of to-dos. And check out these coordinating stencil sets that you can cut apart; they have all the stencils you’d need for a quilt, big blocks, small blocks and borders, all on one stencil. I suppose you wouldn’t even have to cut them apart, and then they’d be all together when you need to use them.

Red Rock Threads—This place is my favorite to buy threads! Based in Pahrump, Nevada (near my Las Vegas hometown), this nice lady has LOADS of different brands of thread in stock, all the time. She does one thing, thread, and she does it very well indeed. (Okay, she has some needles and embroidery supplies, but she does them well too.) Shipping is extremely reasonable; it used to be free, and just after she was forced to change policy due to rising Postal Service fees (long after the fees actually rose, btw), I talked to her on the phone and she actually apologized and said she felt soooo bad that she’d had to start charging shipping. If only other mail order businesses were like this, right? There’s lots of extra, free info on the site about threads, as well as conversion charts. Quick ordering, quick shipping, great customer service, what more could you ask for? Well, I could ask for YLI Soft Touch, which seems to be the only thing I’ve ever wanted that she didn’t have!

The Quilters Quarter—I have no idea why I bookmarked this one, or when for that matter, but I am happy to see that they have YLI Soft Touch cotton thread! I have a heck of a time finding this thread online for some reason. I use it in the bobbin for machine embroidery, though I’m not sure why I started that either. Somehow it just seems to make sense to use cotton thread if I’m doing embroidery for quilts; you know, that “cotton fabric, 100% cotton thread” thing. Quilters Quarter has a pretty nice selection of other quilting items, and I see a good selection of stencils there. Read the rest of this entry »

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