Sunday, July 19, 2009

controversial views

Apparently I hold some rather controversial views on fabric buying. I expressed surprise at how many people list walmart as a fabric source on a message board and got the standard "it's all I can afford" and "it's the only place within spitting distance" whines in return. I call bullshit. Every LQS puts fabric on sale and this isn't the horse and buggy days, you can drive farther than 10 minutes to get to a store.

I bought fabric for 3.50 a yard friday at a LQS. That's very affordable. Anybody that's posting on a message board is also perfectly capable of buying fabric online. I have bought fabric as low as 3.75 a yard online. And you don't even have to have a credit or debit card for most of the places. You can send them a check or money order.

Bullshit I say.

They say they don't need the quilt snobs telling them otherwise. I say they're shooting themselves in the foot buying fabric at walmart. Walmart demands its manufacturers lower their price by 10% every year. Once you've offshored the manufacturing to some country you can get away with 10 cent an hour wages the only way to lower costs is to start lowering the cost of the goods. That means cheaper quality griege goods and cheaper dyes. Then you lower the quality of the printing process. When the manufacturer has lowered the cost as far as possible then walmart just stops buying from them and finds a new manufacturer in another country that can pay 5 cents an hour and starts all over.

People will put their own neighbors and friends out of work just to buy cheap Chinese goods and then turn around and complain they can't afford anything else when their own good jobs left for China.

Yeah, I know it's controversial and an unpopular view. But ya know, I don't care. If everybody cared more about where their goods came from than how cheap they could get it this country would likely be a whole lot better off. Walmart has not done this country on any other country any good. If anything it has seriously hurt this country.

I've lived in poverty. Don't tell me "I can't" I know better.

3 comments:

Lady Beekeeper said...

Well, now, Little Missy, you got yourself all het up!!

I hear what you are saying. The only place I might have a point in disagreement is that we have hardly any fabrics that aren't made in China or wherever. We were discussing on one of MY message boards that the LQS fabric isn't completely made in the USA.

I have some lovely blocks that I used some Wal Mart fabric and they faded so that they look awful. I used them in a swap and didn't realize they were so crappy (I was new to guilting). Just to clarify, I only used LQS quality on OTHER people's blocks - just cheated myself. All the other fabrics are bright and beautiful and the blacks in my fabric are kind of brownish grey. Live and learn.

old hippy chick said...

Yeah, walmart helped put the American textile businesses offshore so we only have foreign made textiles to choose from. There are a few American textile manufacturers left but they're few and far between.

Unknown said...

Kudos on your post! No one could have said it any better! Thank you. :)