RIP Fabric.com

I was perusing Twitter early this morning when I came across the news that Amazon planned to close Fabric.com. Indeed, Fabric.com’s landing page now sports this notice:

I’m sad about this, obviously, because I did shop there, but what I’m going to miss most of all is that Fabric.com was a great place to do research. As I have pointed out to the husband—who loves online shopping—I can’t order online if I don’t know something even exists. The Fabric.com search engine was so powerful. It allowed me to drill down with specifics of brand, color, weight, fiber content, and many other features. Even if I eventually ordered elsewhere, beginning my search at Fabric.com helped me narrow down the options. Amazon did not port that same search engine over to its Amazon Fabric Shop, sadly.

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I took a load of donations to the thrift store yesterday morning, picked up the thread I needed, then stopped at sewing to visit for an hour over lunch. Sarah is thrilled with how well her garden did this year and we talked about all the tomato varieties we want to plant next spring. Robin is back from her trip to Florida and we’ll be heading over to Spokane in a couple of weeks. Our first stop on that trip will be The Quilting Bee—I called and made an appointment to drop my machine off for service while we are there. They offer one-day service for out of town customers. We have a Janome dealer here but I will not take my machine there for service. Robin has the same machine I do and she took hers to Missoula for service. I’m in Spokane so much that it’s easy for me to have The Quilting Bee service mine.

UPS brought my shipment of Baptist Fan rulers from Amanda Murphy.

I am going to have to watch her videos on how to use these because they are a bit more involved than other rulers. I also picked up that triangle ruler when I got thread yesterday.

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I hemmed all my tops yesterday afternoon when I got home from town. I’m rather proud of the fact that my coverstitch hems are darn near perfect, because coverstitch machines are notoriously difficult to master. Part of that is due to the transition of coverstitch machines from industrial use to domestic use—the early models did not work well—and part of that is operator error. The coverstitch support groups are full of tips and tricks for getting good hems, including pressing, using washable hem tape, hem guides, and other hacks, but people are still plagued by skipped stitches and broken threads. I’ve got my settings dialed in. Literally all I do is to fold up a 1” hem (which I eyeball) pin it in place, then run it through the machine. No hacks needed. My line of stitching is perfectly straight and covers the raw edge of the fabric. If I get a skipped stitch, it’s because I need to change my needles.

And I started that second serger project I cut out earlier in the week. It was getting late in the day, though, and I should know better than to sew when I’m tired. I used the wrong pattern piece at one point. That was easily fixed, but I set the project aside to work on tomorrow.

Today, I am teaching the Easton Cowl class. Tera is signed up to take it, so we’ll have a day of visiting and catching up.