Barb's Fabric Blog

New Web Store

We are so excited to launch our new storefront!  We know this will be a wonderful improvement in our ability to present all our beautiful fabrics to our customers, and the back side of the store will make a marked difference in our ability to process the orders and to continue to provide our famous customer service.

Tips for Shopping

Be sure to view the store at full screen for ease of navigation.

We recommend that you register and create an account.  This will allow our system to keep a record of your orders so that you can review them whenever you want, and you can easily track the progress of an open order.

Remember that this is a new system for us.  As always, be sure to check your confirmation to verify that the order has come to us as you intended.  Your credit card will not be charged until we are ready to ship.

Here are some of the improvements you'll notice

Shopping Cart at a Glance
As you shop, your cart will be visible and editable on the side of each store page.

Best Match Service
You are now able to add our popular Best Match Service right to your shopping cart. 

Alternate Images
We will be able to present the fabrics to you with alternate images when appropriate.  For instance, sometimes you want to see a flat image to get the full view of the print or plaid.  We'll be able to include pictures for scale and close ups of certain parts of a print.  We'll include pictures that show button choices when we can. All of this photographing takes time, so bear with us.  These options are not fully in use yet, but they're coming!

Related Items
You'll be able to see coordinates on the same page.  Scroll to the bottom of the page to view this feature.

Options
We can now offer multiple sizes of buttons on a single product page--whew!  You will be able to select size and color options from this single view.  Note: We do our best to stay on top of the button inventory.  If you receive a message that the options you've chosen are not available, please contact customer service to find out the exact number of buttons in your chosen size and color that we have available.  From our end, we will work hard at posting out-of-stocks on a timely basis. 

Gift Certificates
From now on, any new gift certificates issued can be redeemed directly through the cart system. The balance is automatically adjusted. 

Better search function
The search finds words in the name, stock number and description making it much easier to find a specific fabric or type of fabric.

Shop by Designer
Have a favorite?  Use our drop-down on the side navigation bar to find fabrics by designer.

Featured Items Page
We'll highlight new items, new images of existing items and new coordinates as they occur. You can also see newly added items in the Featured section of each category.   

Ship to multiple addresses
Simply choose "other" in the Ship To drop-down for an item before adding it to your cart.  You can also keep an "address book" of commonly used addresses if you create an online account.

Customer reviews of each item: This is a great place to share your experience with a particular fabric or to share a creative vision.

E-mail an item to a friend:  Have a sewing buddy that's looking for the fabric you just found on our site?  Click Email to a friend and send it off to her/him.  (Because this is automated, your friend's e-mail service may mistakenly mark it as spam -- be sure to remind your friend to check!)

We hope you'll enjoy the new look and the new features!

Fall Fabrics

We are sooo excited about our fall mailers!  Last week before I left for a brief vacation, we finished the copy for the Autumn II mailer.  Can you believe it's only the beginning of September and we're already on Autumn II?  The fact of the matter is that we have to rush to keep up with our customers who are eager to start their fall sewing in July/August. Already many of our Transitons fabrics are sold out and the Autumn I collections have just gone up in the web store. 

What are the trends this fall?  What are we seeing in ready-to-wear?  Follow our fashion news on SewinFashion.com as the season progresses. 

Right now I'll tell you that we are seeing an enormous amount of suit weight double knit...both in cotton and in viscose.  Whether its from Liz Claiborne at Dana Buchman or Diane Von Furstenberg or Tahari, all the design houses have been using this very wearable fabrication! 

More fall fabric talk coming soon!

Fall 2008 at SBDF

We've had a busy summer and I've been lax about posting to the blog.  So much to say...so little time!!

We have a fabulous fall season coming up so we hope you all gear up your your machines  and your creativity and and get ready to sew!  I'll be talking about individual fabrics as I can.  In the meantime, subscribers are already receiving their third mailer of the Autumn season.  If you don't subscribe, we post fabrics that are still in stock to the web store about 2 weeks after we mail to subscribers.  You can follow along there.

Speaking of the web store.  We are in the process of moving to a new store front.  This will take some time and perhaps a little patience on the part of our customers, but when all is said and done, we believe the store will be a better place to shop!  We'll keep you updated as we progress and if you have any problems don't hesitate to contact us.

You'll want to watch the Savvy Sewer Salon for a new video sew along hosted by Jennifer Stern of J Stern Designs.  You can see the pattern she'll use at her web site.  The sewalong will encompass beginner techniques and Jennifer's suggestions for finishing touches to her simple, wearable, fashionable tee!  She'll be available for questions through the Salon as you watch the video and make your own.  Fun for any level of sewist!

We have some wonderful Boutique fabrics coming in the next few weeks.  Watch this blog and the web store for up to date info on luxurious offerings that are rare in today's marketplace. 

We're looking forward to a visit from Pattern Review members on September 20th.  It's always good to have our first group visit early in the season --it forces us to clean up our act in the Rem room!!!  We'll be cleaning, sorting, re-pricing and generally sprucing things up for PR.  If you aren't familiar with Pattern Review...check it out. 

As you can see we have a very busy fall.  This is our crunch season because the advent of the  holidays compresses our mailing schedule.  Be on the lookout for rich harvest colors of deep pumpkin, squash, melon and bright fern green; trendy blue teal and cranberry pink; classic black and elegant ivory in every fabrication we could find; and purples from magenta to blue violet!! Watch for lots of mailers (at least one per month) and act quickly if you want to get first dibs on the great fabrics!