Monday, June 02, 2008

I'm Making Lemonade

No, it's not another food post, though lately, I know that I am focused on healthy food A LOT because it feels like one of few things going on with me health-wise over which I have some control.

The lemonade I'm talking about is what to do about about a wide back I bought on Friday afternoon. The bolt said it was 108 inches wide and when asked how much I needed, I very carefully and diplomatically answered that if it was carefully cut on grain, three yards, 108 inches, would be perfect. The clerk assured me that it absolutely would be straight because they tore the backing fabrics and proceeded to measure and snip the fabric while chatting away and telling me that I would be able to make one of the cool purses that she saw everywhere at Paducah made from selvedges.

And then she did the oddest thing . . . she snipped the fabric at the fold instead of a the selvedge edge. She had a really hard time tearing it, but she managed it. I was feeling so lousy, I didn't really think much about it until several hours later when I opened it up at home, planning to wash it and it looked like this.

Straight Cut?

I put it in the washer and hoped it would still be long enough. It was too late to call the store, and I needed to take it and the quilt top to a longarmer the next day, but I sent email and linked to this photo–some photos really are worth a thousand words–about it to the store.

After a trip through the washer and dryer, the fabric is too short . . . and also too narrow. Shame on you, Marcus Brothers. 108" is now less than 100" wide, more than 8% shrinkage.

I received no response to my effort to "contact us" through the store's web site and have subsequently called the shop and asked the owner to call me back. She hasn't.

And so, it's time to make lemonade from the situation or, in this case, quilt back art . . . or it will be, when I'm feeling better. In the meantime, in keeping with the food imagery, I'll borrow a page from the Men's Health book/website/newsletter Eat This, Not That and personally recommend to any quilters that happen to be in the Lansing, Michigan area to Shop Here and definitely Not There.

2 comments:

Cathi said...

What an awful thing to have happen! Has the quilt store owner called you yet?

Linda said...

Did you ever hear from Pam?

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