Fabric Stores

I hate fabric stores.

I am intimidated by them. I never know how to find things. I don't sew and, apparently, neither do the workers. The signage is abysmal and there is never anyone to help you. If you see a staff person walking around and you ask a question, the employee will point and say “over there.”

Fabric stores are full of junky things that have nothing to do with fabric. Glitzy feathers, ugly appliqués, all manner of garage-sale crafty junk. They sell magazines and candy and straw stuff. They have some sort of substance sprayed on the material that makes my eyes itch. Something lethal on the fabric.

I haven't always felt this way. I remember the old days – the fifties and sixties, when people sewed their own clothing. My mother made things for my sisters and me; she’d take us to the fabric stores and we’d sit down and look through the Simplicity and McCall’s pattern books and the nice staff would get the patterns out of the drawers for us, and we’d pick out material and it would always be natural fibers, and when I was really little, they even had dotted Swiss. Chances are nobody now would even know what dotted Swiss is.

I had to go in a fabric store yesterday. It was freezing cold outside and sweltering hot inside. I walked through the store, in desperate pursuit of buttons; I borrowed M’s wide-wale plum corduroy shirt to wear in Santa Fe and half of the buttons broke in the dryer, so I had to replace them. Was there anyone to help me? No. Were there any buttons to match the shirt? Hell, no. They had pale purple and off-burgundy and ghastly pink and vile lavender, but nothing of plum. Was my purse heavy? Yes. Did my back hurt? Yes. Did I finally call M. on my cell phone and ask for help? Yes, yes, and yes.

I finally found six buttons that looked like they might work. Then I decided that since I was in the store, I might as well buy some material to cover journals. I asked for batik fabric. The employee did not know what batik was. Even when I spelled it – had never heard of it. At least this saved me from having to wait for 45 minutes at the cutting table (torture!) so someone could cut out the fabric and write down the yardage on a tiny slip of paper for me to take to the counter, where I would have to again stand in line for infinity.

I stood, sweating, at checkout, with my six buttons as the slow-witted person behind the desk laboriously filled out anal-retentive forms and painstakingly rung up the assortment of items for the person ahead of me. As I waited there, I thought about the public library where I work. I vowed that no patron on my watch will ever feel the way I felt in that fabric store – and the way I feel in all fabric stores. At the very least – even if I can’t control the temperature of the building, I will know how to spell batik and what it is, and I won’t point and say “over there!”

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