Where are all the fabric shops?

Hi,

I am from the 'old school' of making dresses for my two daughters, shirts and robes for my husband and clothes for me including coats (IL in 1960s-1980s).  There were always at least two fabric shops in town (med-small town).  And of course, who could forget the DIME STORE!

Now I live in a huge metropolitan area. Walmart 'had' fabric and trimmings, Rag Shop 'was' fantastic, and now the only game in town is JoAnn's.  I have two big projects I am working on with deadlines and no embellishments, no hardware accoutrements, and very, very little variety. Another project includes crochet thread, in particular I was searching for crochet #10 in multi-colors (they have one - red, white, green. I purchased it and am crocheting a butterfly - YIKES, remember the red and green awful tasting frosting that got all over you when you ate it?. . . . well. . . that's what it looks like when I crochet with it. I keep looking at my hands thinking, it's getting all over them).  Not acceptable. Another fabric I saw on one of the blogs is the Mod-Forest.  Wonders, they did have it - ONE- white background.  They cannot order it without a skew # and that's a maybe if they would get it in anyway.  Who orders for them? The say, 'we have to take what is delivered!'  What happened to pleasing the customer?

What happened to more stores/competition?  We have a huge sewing group/guild here (ASG) and no fabric stores to speak of?  I know the economy is weak, however, that's when people sew more.  I do not expect that in a metropolitan area with many large cities surrounding something like this would happen.  There is nothing within too many miles to go searching.  Miami is not an option -- not with my directionless wit.  I am so thankful I have Internet. Stores and companies should not wonder why we don't shop in their stores.  Cut back, don't give us what we want and guess what, we have long memories!

Does anyone else have these issues?  Are there any answers? Moving is not an option, I live in 

Paradise.

Thanks for stopping by.

God Bless.

Jan