Getting Supplies

One of the most time-consuming and stressful parts of my project so far has been buying supplies. For my project, I decided to use soft cotton flannel, which is relatively expensive (about $7.00 per yard). I had a bit of trouble trying to find fabric that had both good quality and was relatively cheap, since I would be buying it in bulk.

I had heard before from lots of people to use smaller, locally owned shops and stores, but I was never able to find enough material to use. Because I didn't want to clean out smaller stores only to have to visit multiple others, I decided to try to buy my fabric at a bigger, corporate store: Joann's.

I tried multiple times to contact a store manager or even to pitch my case at a corporate level, but I always got automated messages back (which was expected but still frustrating). So rather than try to get personal discounts for my project, I decided to take advantage of coupons and sales.

Lucky for me, March is Craft Month, so I came across multiple sales for soft cotton flannel, and good ones, too! For the most part, I was able to save about 50% on all of my fabric and even a few miscellaneous supplies.

I went shopping three times, and on each occasion, I spent between $200 and $300 and bought enough fabric for about 30 blankets. It ended up taking me about 45 minutes just to get my fabric picked out and matched, and another 45 to get it cut.

Looking back, I wish I would have used a few smaller stores to try to get large personal discounts, but buying from a larger store allowed me to have a much larger selection of fabric and score such large savings.