I stopped by Sewingmachine.com on the way home from a recent pet therapy visit. A former Joann store sits next door it – still vacant. The bankruptcy case is ongoing.
While I occasionally miss Joann – sorry Michael’s, no amount of Knit & Sew Shop is going to fill the void for me – I’ve found Hobby Lobby and the sale section at 2-3 local shops can generally fill in what my stash lacks. Fabric swaps with friends and the guild’s free table round out any needed items for community service projects. I’m pretty sure my overall spending on fabric & notions has gone down since Joann closed.
Quilt shops and sewing machine dealers in my area simply aren’t marking things down to sell through as in the past. At the Original Sewing & Quilt Expo in mid-March, a local dealer was offering classroom use Janome 9480s with the ASR for $5,799. This special price was so secret that the classroom machine price wasn’t even listed on the tag. You had to ask. It was only $300 less than the show price of $6,099 on a brand new model. Two weeks after the show, the dealer is advertising the same classroom machines in its email blasts – without a price. Why all the secrecy?
Joann helped keep sewing machine prices in-check. If I needed to replace a kid-use sewing machine, I knew I could get a decent machine for about $250 the very same day. Can’t do that now! Even sellers on FB Marketplace aren’t discounting things very much. I’m not willing to pay $650 for a used sewing machine for CraftLAB. We’ll continue touse the ones we have.
Come Stitch With Me 