So Long, Joann

In 1968, I needed a white dress to wear under my white graduation gown. Either that, the gown-rental person advised, or just wear a white slip underneath. (We all wore slips then.) However, wearing a slip under a very loose gown seemed all too much like going out in front of a chock-full gymnasium in my underwear. I fought with my mother on it, and I lost. No new white dress that I might never wear again.

So I went to Joann's. I didn't sew all that much then, but I knew how, and I had a pattern I'd already made once, so I knew I wouldn't screw it up too bad. White fabric seemed to be in short supply and expensive, but someone at Joann's helped me choose 60-inch-wide brocade. It was on sale and I only needed a yard and a half if I laid it out just so.

It worked. I don't know that I ever wore the dress again, but it worked under my graduation gown.

When my daughter and several nieces got married, I bought enough white satin and tulle at Joann's to make a curtain for a high school stage if I'd been so inclined, waiting as long as I could until it went on sale in the flyer.

There are no words to describe how much I hate sewing satin, tulle, and all things wedding, but that is a whole other story if I ever find the words.

I made small quilts with Kaye Wood's six-hour quilt pattern. For Riley, for local hospitals, for nursing homes, for whomever had a baby. I'd find an anchor color or fabric and go from there. I didn't keep count of how many I made, and sometimes I wish I had, but that would have given the project a different importance than the one that mattered.

When I retired and promised the grands I'd make them quilts, I spent hours hovering over the quilting cottons, looking at patterns, buying cotton thread and cotton batting and backing fabric that was wide enough that it would have been fairly easy to line that stage curtain if I'd ever made it. I sought advice from other quilters carrying around their armloads of bolts of fabric destined for the cutting table.

My sewing life went from the home place, Joann's, to buying fabric at quilt shops, too. One of my favorites was called Heaven on Earth. A likely name because to a sewist, that's exactly what it was. My daughter-in-law sat on the floor there and chose the fabric combination for the quilt I would make for her oldest son.

I bought holiday fabric because it was beautiful, flannel because it was warm, fleece because everyone else did, interfacing because even though I hate it, it's useful.

I made shirts for my boys and for my girls, went on a T-shirt binge that lasted long enough I could put one together in the space of time it took to drink a cup of coffee. I made pretty, frilly things for granddaughters. Through it all, Joann was my support system, even after my store closed and I had to go to a store farther away where I didn't know anybody.

I don't sew much anymore, although my stash is intact in plastic totes and teetering stacks on shelves. I still hover over fabric whenever I am in a place that sells it, absorbing the scents of sizing and textiles and creativity. Feeling the special crispness of cloth on bolts.

But time stands still for no one. Heaven on Earth closed recently. Another nearby quilt shop has reduced hours and now specializes in mail order.

And Joann's has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy twice. It is closing 500 stores, including the ones close enough for me to drive to on a day when I have plenty of time to do so.

Fabric is still available, of course, much of it in pre-cuts at Walmart or in big-boxy Hobby Lobbies and Michael's stores in towns I don't want to drive to. Where nobody knows your name or cares what you want to match to what or that the cotton feels ... wrong. Or cheap, like they've sneaked some polyester into it. Or too thick. Or slubby.

The only store even semi-close to me is one I try to avoid because it as a company and I as a human being have different points of view about life. They probably wouldn't choose to read my books, either, and that's okay.

If I were still sewing a lot, I'm not sure what I would do now. You can order all kinds of craft items online, often cheaper than in a real store, and you can order fabric, too. But if you sew, if you started out buying a yard and a half of brocade at Joann's after running your hand over the silky feel of it, it's hard to buy fabric that may not rest right under your fingers or may not have the seductive scent of sizing and textiles. If it comes in a box with an Amazon curved arrow on the side, you won't know until you open it if what you bought came from separate runs of the pattern that may not exactly match. And no one but you will care.

In it's 80-or-so years in business, Joann's has changed names and logos a few times. It's been Jo-Ann's and JOANN and a few others in there. It's bought out a few other chains and expanded its inventory, I suppose to stay up with the big-box places.

But to me, it's always just been Joann's. It's been like a girlfriend with a storefront. Losing it is like one more charm dropping off a bracelet at a time when it already feels as if I'm down to little more than the chain and the clasp.

Thanks, Joann. You've been a good friend.

Have a good week. Be nice to somebody.