Overcome Your Fear of Online Fabric Shopping!

If you live in the U.S., you might be reeling from the recent loss of JoAnn fabric stores. And if you don’t live in the U.S., you still might be frustrated by the lack of local fabric buying options. I feel it too! I too wish I could touch and see the fabrics in person before buying them, and I understand that online fabric shopping adds an element of risk. What if the fabric feels different than I thought it would? What if the color wasn’t what I was expecting. What if I need more and they’ve already sold out, or I have to pay another shipping cost?

I get it. BUT, I’ve come to grips with this new reality and not only have I implemented some strategies for successful online fabric shopping, I’m having FUN doing it! So today I’m going to share some tips for buying fabric online, whether you’re a quilter or a garment sewist, plus my current go-to shops.

Let’s hop into it!

Coping without JoAnn

First, if you need a pick-me-up about the JoAnn’s thing, I posted a video on YouTube recently with some encouragement and tips for going forward. It’s gotten so many comments of solidarity and ideas, so it clearly resonated! You can watch that here and I’ll also stick it at the bottom of this post to make it easier.

Removing the Risk from Online Fabric Shopping

I know it’s happened to all of us — you order fabric online for a certain project, only to receive it and it’s not what you expected, putting you right back at square one. I think the main reason this happens is because most people don’t have a working knowledge of fabric content. What various fabrics feel like and how they drape is essential knowledge when buying fabric without being able to touch it first.

If this is you, don’t worry. You can learn!

Tips for learning about fabric content

First, start to notice what your ready-to-wear clothes are made out of. Are many of your favorite pieces linen, or a linen blend? Or do you reach for that rayon dress over and over again? Do you prefer your t-shirts to be all cotton, or poly blends? This is information you can take straight to the online fabric store. Knowing what these fabrics feel like will help you be able to match a fabric to a pattern successfully.

Another idea is to create your own fabric swatch book. I’ve actually created a FREE downloadable template for this, which you can grab from my shop. When I shop for fabrics online, they almost always come with the fabric content either on the invoice, or as a sticker on the fabric itself.

I cut a small swatch of each new fabric and stick it in my binder on a swatch sheet, writing down the fabric content, where I got it and maybe how much I got, and the washing instructions if I feel they’re important.

Over time, you’ll have a handy resource that you can refer to when ordering future fabrics! I’m finding this especially useful for new-to-me knit fabrics, where the content can vary so much and they’re often named weird things (like Cupro, what even is that, lol). So having the samples at my fingertips helps to order the right thing for the right project.

So create your own sewing notebook, or grab the free printable, print off a bunch and stick them in a binder. You’ll thank yourself over the years!

But it’s so expensive shopping online!

Okay, this is one that can absolutely be true if you’ve been used to playing the coupon games (though am I the only one who thought JoAnn had gotten very expensive, even with the discounts??) I’ve always been a pretty frugal person, and I still get fabrics from thrift stores and I often shop the clearance when I’m shopping online. But I’m willing to pay full price too, as long as it’s not an impulse purchase and I know what I’m buying and going in with a plan.

Here are my tips for keeping it in budget:

Beware the Stash

I think we have to rethink the concept of stash building. Is it better to spend more per yard on a fabric that gets used for something specific right away, or is it better to spend the same amount on impulse-buy fabrics because they’re cheap and you might use them someday, only for them to languish in the drawer because years later you’ve either fallen out of love, or you could never figure out what to do with it? I think it’s the first one!

Saving Money at Online Fabric Shops

My best tip for this is to join the email lists for the online fabric shops you like! This way, they’ll send you emails when they’re having sales on certain items. I love rayon, so when a shop sends me an email that says all the rayons are 60% off, I hop over and check it out. At some fabric shops, like Califabrics, you can even earn rewards to apply to future orders!

If you have a list in mind of things you’d like to make and fabrics you need, it’s a matter of time before some of those things will go on sale, so those emails can be real money savers.

My other tip is to shop the sale and clearance sections. There are a few shops that have such beautiful fabrics, but are simply out of my budget. So at these stores, if I love a fabric, I’ll check back in on it occasionally to see if it’s been reduced. Often, just like retail stores, everything goes on clearance eventually!

(Here’s a sampling of the Summer clothes I’ve been sewing! All these fabrics came from online shops.)

There’s Just Too Many to Choose from and I’m Overwhelemed

You’re right, there are a TON of online options nowadays. But you don’t need very many. I have a few favorite shops in my back pocket and honestly, I don’t branch out very often. It’s a case of less is more. I know there’s science behind the freeze factor when it comes to too many choices, so do yourself a favor, find a couple shops you like and trust, join their email lists, and stick to them.

My Favorite Online Shops

Okay, now for the good stuff! I have a handful of go-to shops for both quilting and garment fabrics!

I’ll start with the quilting shops:

• Fabric Pop. I love this shop because she curates a selection of fun cotton that are right up my alley aesthetically. One of my YouTube viewers told me about it when I was working on my fish quilt and I’m so grateful.

• Connecting Threads. This shop was kind enough to send me some fabric to try and what they sent made me a customer! I love their options for faux textured solids and I’m using them a ton on my current improv quilt project.

• Fat Quarter Shop. This probably isn’t new to anyone, but the sheer volume of options here is what makes it the place to go if you’re looking for something specific or if you saw that special designer print on Instagram and need it right now, LOL.

• Etsy. I know this is technically more than one shop, but it’s an incredible resource for so many different reasons. My favorite thing is to search Etsy for scrap bags of certain styles. I need low volume prints for my house quilt, but wanted a large variety without buying yardage of everything, so I ordered low volume scrap bags. I also needed some cute Heather Ross scraps with animals and pictures on them for the same project and found a huge bundle of them on Etsy. I also have my eye on some Indian block print scraps and hand dyed wovens. Think outside the box on Etsy!

(I made this fella using faux textured green fabrics from Connecting Threads. And the cute pigeons are from Fabric Pop!)

Garment Fabric Shops

I’ve recently gotten back into garment sewing and since it had been a few years since I’d been making very many clothes, I pretty much had no garment fabric stash and was starting from scratch. These are my favorites!

• Califabrics. My number one favorite. I LOVE that they have so many designer deadstocks (this is fabric that was used in designer garments, and the leftovers were sold to the fabric shop to sell as yardage). Every single thing I’ve gotten from them has been gorgeous and I have never fail to find something fantastic. They also have great presence on Instagram, in email, and amazing and personal customer service.

• Surge Fabrics. I’ve only ordered from this shop once so far, because I was wanting to sample several different knits in order to see what I liked for basic tees and tanks. They have a lot of great knits to choose from in a ton of colors, and I really like the cupro rib, so now I know what to order when I’m ready for some t-shirt sewing.Plus, they’re family owned!

• Fabric Mart. This shop is so great for those sales I was talking about earlier! They are constantly rotating sale fabrics so that the rayons will be 65% off today and then cottons are 70% off a few days from now. I’ve always had a great experience shopping here.

• Fabric Wholesale Direct. This is where I go for certain specialty fabrics. If you need fabric for dancewear, or you need utility fabrics like Ripstop, this is a great resource with great prices. I made my daughter and her ballet friends skirts for $6 a piece by buying power mesh at this shop — the same skirts retail for up to $60 each!

• Linen Lab. I just placed my first order from this shop and I’m very excited about it. Linen is a favorite fabric of mine, but it is pricey. It’s worth it, though, there’s nothing like it! Linen Lab is a shop out of South Korea, that opened an online shop during the pandemic. Thankfully, they also have a shop on Amazon! I noticed that some fabrics are shipped by Amazon, and some ship from Korea, adding time and a shipping cost, understandably. I’m very excited to have found this resource, since they have so many fabrics to offer that I haven’t seen in U.S. shops, and at prices that do seem lower than others I’ve seen.

(The dress below is made from the most dreamyl deadstock linen/rayon blend from Califabrics!)

That’s all! I know, it’s not many, but I’ve been able to build a beautiful summer wardrobe just from these shops, so I probably won’t branch out much, unless I find something else I love equally much. Feel free to chime in with your favorite shops in the comments!

Cheers and Happy Sewing :)

Nikki

P.S. Here’s my video on Life after JoAnn: