How to Shop the Remnant Rack

I’ve had a couple of requests for a tutorial on how to shop the remnant rack. I am happy to share my tips and tricks with you. If you sew or quilt, the remnant rack is one of the first places you should look when you shop at Joanns or Hobby Lobby.

What is the remnant rack? The remnant rack is the place where any cuts of fabric less than one yard end up. Those pieces are too small to put back onto the bolt. I am one of those people who will take the extra fabric that might be on the bolt, if it’s less than a yard, so I bless those shoppers who buy only enough for their project and leave the remnants for the rest of us.

Why shop the remnant rack?

  • The remnants are discounted. The associates at the cutting counter will cut a piece of fabric from the bolt as narrow as 4” wide, but you may pay full price for it.

  • You may only need a small piece for your project. Perhaps it’s because I do a lot of scrappy quilts, but I like the challenge of designing with smaller bits. That does come back to bite me on occasion, however. Once a fabric ends up on the remnant rack, that’s probably the last you’ll see of it.

  • You might want to experiment with a new fabric. Maybe you haven’t worked with clear vinyl yet. Before you have the cut counter pull that giant roll off the rack to cut a small piece, check the remnant rack for smaller chunks. Because you got the remnant at a discount, you won’t feel so bad if your experiment isn’t successful.

  • It’s a quick and inexpensive way to build up a fabric stash, so that when you get hit with an urge to try a new pattern at 11 pm on a Friday night (or 5 am on a Saturday morning), you can pull out what you need and get started.

Our Joann’s remnant rack looks like this:

Our remnant rack is not very organized. The remnant racks in the Spokane stores are sorted by color, which I appreciate. Some stores will also separate the fleece remnants from the other fabrics—perhaps putting them on a separate display—which I also appreciate. As I look through the remnants at our store, I try to sort and straighten them for the next shopper. I should get that 30% discount for team members.

That sign at the top notes that remnants are 50% off, and the small print underneath notes that the price is 50% off the current sale price, if any. More on that in a moment.

Each remnant is rolled and tagged before it is put on the rack. Our Joanns recently hired someone who rolls the remnants into half-size (6”) rolls, which is driving me nuts as they don’t fit in well with the rolls that are about 12” long. (Get off my lawn.)

I usually start at the top left and look through each section. There is no rhyme or reason to where the newest remnants end up. Some associates put them on the top rack. Some put them on the bottom rack. I almost always look for quilt cotton remnants, first, as those are the fabrics I use most often. I have to be careful, though, because some of the flannels have a flat nap that makes them feel like quilt cotton. As I go along, I make a stack on one side of the rack of things I am considering.

Each remnant has a label, and this information is key:

Let’s start at the top. The first number tells you how much yardage is in that remnant. This label came from a chunk of Christmas fabric. I see that this remnant is 7/8 of a yard. (Hopefully, you learned how to convert decimals to fractions in school.) The next number ($10.99) is the regular price of the fabric per yard, and they have calculated out how much that remnant would be at full price ($9.61).

However, the remnants are 50% off the current price of the fabric. If the fabric were full price, this remnant would be half of $9.61, or $4.80. All the Christmas fabrics were 50% off the regular price yesterday when I picked up this remnant, so the price of the remnant was actually 50% off the sale price.

$10.99 x .50 = $5.50 (the sale price of the fabric per yard)

0.875 x $5.50 = $4.80 (the price of this remnant at the current sale price)

$4.80 x .50 = $2.40 (the price of this remnant with the remnant discount factored in)

I think of the fabric I find on the remnant rack as my “latte fabric” because sometimes I get several pieces for the price of a Starbuck’s latte. It lasts a lot longer and doesn’t end up on my hips. I made myself a T-shirt this summer from two one-yard chunks of knit fabric I found on the remnant rack. Total cost: $6.00.

The remnant label has other useful information, like the fiber content. Sometimes I can tell by feel, but sometimes I have to check. It also gives the width of the fabric, which might be 42” for quilt cotton, 58” for knits, or even 108” for wide backs. If you have concerns about washability, check the care section to see what it recommends.

A few other things to note:

  • Every so often, Joanns will put the remnants on sale for 75% off, usually after Christmas or when the remnant rack is full to overflowing.

  • “Remnants” include anything that comes on a bolt, which includes batting and interfacing, too, so don’t forget to look for small pieces of those items.

  • The week after a big sale is usually a good time to check the remnant rack. If Joanns puts all the novelty prints on sale for 40% off, it’s a good bet that there will be a bunch of them on the remnant rack a few days later.

  • Hobby Lobby doesn’t have a remnant rack, per se—they put their remnants in with the clearance items. Our Hobby Lobby has a clearance rack near the fabric and craft section, but I have been in HL stores where there was ONE clearance rack and the fabric remnants were way on the other side of the store. Sometimes it requires a bit of detective work. Also, HL discounts each remnant, but the price you pay is the price that is on the label. There is no extra math to do.

Having been in dozens of Joann Fabrics stores around the country, I note that the remnant racks reflect different shopping habits of sewists in that area. Our remnant rack gets gleaned thoroughly on a regular basis. The remnant rack in the Moses Lake, WA store is huge and overflowing. Sometimes I wonder if their customers even know it exists.

Hopefully this has been helpful. I already have lots of competition for the remnant rack here in Kalispell, so I don’t think I am giving any secrets away.

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I walked the craft show with Robin yesterday morning. I found a Christmas present for someone on my list, but the show was smaller than I thought it would be. Only one vendor had a booth full of sewn items. Lots of jewelry, lots of crocheted items, lots of woodworking. I’m glad I went, but I was reminded why I don’t usually go to town on Saturdays. Traffic was awful.

When I got home, I quilted the body pieces for the Little Poppins bag and started collecting supplies to take to class. I also took advantage of having the Janome set up for straight-line quilting and did a stack of casserole hot pads that were assembled and waiting to be quilted. Now I have about a dozen that are quilted and trimmed and waiting for binding.