No LQS near me, Walmart only. I do most of my shopping on line from brick and mortar shops that also have online catalogs, MSQC is my favorite. I have a friend who had a small LQS - she said it as very difficult, having to buy full bolts of every fabric in a new collection was cost prohibitive and she and her partner had to be very selective. Long story short - their shop was to small, start-up $ to limiting, their fabric selection wasn't large enough to make quilters
happy. They closed after a year.

Maybe the reason the brick & mortar bite the dust is LOUSY customer service! I will pay more for that...I get excited when the MSQC puts the little thank you on my receipt! We don't have any quilting stores here in Miami. But I love the new Hobby Lobby where the girls are delightful!!!

THIS! I understand shop keepers want weekends off too, but be closed on Tuesdays & Wednesdays instead or something. Or at least be open one or two Sundays per month - that's my best day for shopping and none of the good little boutique shops (quilting & otherwise) are open.

I also agree that classes are a LQS's best friend. There's a shop in town that I don't really care for their fabric selection so I never go...except for classes. I take a class there almost every month, and I almost always buy SOMETHING on class day, sometimes an expensive something if I forgot mine at home. (grr) And during class breaks I tend to wander around and look...I rarely find fabric I like there but sometimes I do, and when I do I will buy some. If I (or their purchaser person) had different taste I'd probably spend a lot more there.

My quilt shop offers a discount on the long arm quilting if you buy your fabric from them. I only buy inline when it isn't available locally.

I don't order material on line or anything that has to do with quilting because I haven't gotten that experienced in sewing yet but I do wish I could sometimes take pictures of some materials and then come home and see what kind of scraps that I might could use with their material at the store. I will be some kind of happy if I could quilt like others do. Maybe I will one day in the future.

Since I have no fabric shops close to me, I often buy on-line. Even if I paid tax it would be cheaper than the cost of gas to drive 50 - 80 miles round trip.

one of the reasons some states are enacting new sales tax laws is because people were not paying their taxes when they made online purchases. If you look at your income tax paperwork, with most states there is a line for you to put the amount of money spent on online purchases and calculate the tax you owe. This is one reason companies like Amazon send a yearend statement to their frequent buyers. So it was up to the honor system for people to pay. As you can imagine, too many people decided not to pay figuring that no one would be the wiser. Probably so, but this loss of revenue for your state creates a whole lot of other problems. We discovered this when our group purchased uniforms for a school group and the company (located in another state) sent us the form letting us know they had filed with our state. Granted this was a large purchase, but following researching it, we discovered that it applies to all purchases made that the company did not charge tax for.

I used to own a small business and made window treatments and did wallpaper. I had wholesale accounts. You would not believe the number of people who called, had me do estimates, select from my catalogs and order by phone from a well known company back on the east coast. Then, they would call me to do the fabrication or hang the wallpaper. My solution was to charge one price for labor for people who bought product from me and a higher price for labor when they had purchased elsewhere. Yes, a significant number of people 'work and abuse' the system. I try to support my local LQS and buy whatever I can there.

If the brick and mortar specialty quilt shops close - perhaps fabric will go back into department stores like it did years ago.

So much depends on where you live, I now have only 1 local quilt shop, I do go there for classes and have bought a machine & many notions there. But I buy most fabric on line because I mainly use novelty fabrics for children's quilts and she doesn't carry any novelty fabric.