Fabric. . . it's just delicious. It's soft, comfy and warm. It can be bright and pretty and draw you to touch it. Stretchy or stiff, snug and homely, here at J&O we just love fabric. At our store in New Jersey, it's literally all over the place. We have huge rolls of decoratives stacked on top of each other, a wall filled with tapestries of all kinds, and additional rolls on the floor display. Not to mention our aisles and aisles of novelty cottons from every manufacturer imaginable.
There's something about seeing rolls of beautiful fabric that signifies potential; a raw material with "sew" many possibilities. Could be a summer dress, a pair of slacks, a quilt, drapes, the possibilities go on and on. Meditating on all the possibilities could make a fabric lover go crazy.
Just think, we spend our whole lives wrapped in some kind of cloth. From the moment we arrive in this world to when our fragile shells deteriorate and become apart of the Earth, fabric is apart of our lives. Cotton, linen, cashmere, wool, silk and including polyester and rayon, fabric can be used for everything from apparel, to sails on a sailboat, to becoming a base for a lamp. Every group of people on this planet use fabric, so it can almost be put on the same level as food and shelter (or maybe not, lol).
From another perspective, if you sew, you're appreciation for fabrics may be on a more conscious level than everyone else. Someone who sews is constantly working, touching, manipulating and shaping fabric. So it's normal for a sewer to absolutely LOVE fabrics. Some sewers walk into our store in New Jersey and become overwhelmed at the amount of fabric we have. Who doesn't adore gorgeous fabric, that not only has an awesome surface but is pleasant to the touch? It's perfectly all right to buy fabric just because you think its gorgeous, without any immediate use in mind.
If you're an avid sewer, building up your very own "fabric stash." is an excellent way to stimulate your creativity. There's just something about looking at neatly folded stacks of beautiful fabric that will provoke a sense of calm and serenity. On a side note, we'll let you in on a little secret. . . the fabric industry is in many ways like the ever-changing fashion industry; styles come and go, prints come and go; items go in and out of style. So, if there's a print you just absolutely love, get it before it's gone and discontinued. Even the most popular prints have a cut off point.
J&O Fabrics is dedicated to doing all we can to keep your sewing possibilities fresh. If you LOVE fabric, celebrate it! Teach someone how to sew, make someone a quilt, or sew your own drapes. Allow yourself to reconnect with something that's very closely woven into our lives.
J&O Fabrics. . . sew many possibilities _______________________________________
If you're in the area, visit our store in Pennsauken, New Jersey, right outside of Philadelphia. The size of a supermarket, we have the largest selection of fabrics in New Jersey! Everything we carry is not on our website, so if you're in the area, check us out and browse our fabric aisles.
J&O Fabric Center 9401 Route 130 South Where Rt.73 and 130 meet Pennsauken, New Jersey 08110 info@jandofabrics.com
Warm weather has arrived. Are you ready to spruce up your lawn/deck/porch furniture? If you are, you have to browse through J&O's wide selection of outdoor fabrics. Outdoor fabrics are typically made to take more of a beating than regular cloths, and so of course J&O carries only the most durable outdoor fabrics that will hold up against the elements. Browse through our wide selection of tough and sturdy Textilenes. Textilenes are not only durable, but a delight to see. Easy to maintain with a porous surface, Textilenes dry quick and will resist fading, mildew and wear and tear. In varying neutral earth tones explore all of J&O's many Textilene possibilities.
In addition to our collection of Textilenes, we also carry Outdoor Fabrics in solid colors, stripes, animal prints, nature designs, florals, tropical themes and retro patterns. Take a look at a few featured designs below.
Your outdoor furniture deserves a summer make-over. Give as much attention to your outdoor decor as your "home" decor. Visit jofabrics.com today and peruse our variety of Outdoor fabrics.
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Not interested in outdoor fabric? Browse our wide selection of everything from upholstery to novelty cotton. If you're in the area, make sure to visit our store in Pennsauken, New Jersey. Big as a supermarket, we have one of the largest selections in this area. We are only 5 mins from Philadelphia and 1 1/2 hour drive from New York City.
J&O Fabric Center 9401 Route 130 South Where Rt. 73 and 130 Meet Pennsauken, New Jersey 08110 info@jandofabrics.com
Not to rip off John Witherspoon's famous saying from the movie Boomerang but, it's true. In order to take something from mediocre to excellent, ya gotta know how to coordinate. Mixing and matching your own fabrics is a fabulous way to express your creativity and personal style. If you struggle with coordinating the right fabrics, we've included a few tips to help you along the way.
Coordinating fabrics in any of your sewing projects is just as important as the actual construction. From our previous blog on Coordinating Fabrics, you'll be happy to know that J&O Fabrics is now working on adding matching coordinates to just about every fabric we carry.
Anyhow, most home decor textile manufacturers come out with new lines each season jam-packed with coordinate collections complete with decorative florals, stripes, supersoft chenille upholstery and more. In any given catalogue, a whole living room will be decked out with a complete set of fabrics to upholster the couch, ottoman, chaise lounge and even make drapes and decorative pillows. All this is excellent! However, not everyone wants a cookie cutter living room, sometimes you may want to mix and match fabrics on your own to suit your own tastes. So. . . you'll need to have some idea on just how to do it.
Firstly, feel free to express yourself and not be shackled by trends. Trends will come and go. Just because everyone matches florals with stripes doesn't mean that you have to. If you follow the reasoning behind why florals match well with stripes, you should be okay matching on your own.
While coordinating, one idea is to create balance with contrast. A straight line will contrast with a circle. Dark will contrast light. A tight structure will contrast with chaos and something large will contrast with something very small.
Here are a few examples of how these ideas manifest themselves on fabric combinations.
Linear to Circular
Busy to Textural (Plain)
Large to Small
Going along with the idea of creating balance by contrast, another way to blend fabrics is to combine HOT with COOL colors. Hot colors include, reds, oranges, yellows etc. And COOL colors include, greens and blues. In a project full of hot warm colors, a cool colored accent may be just the key to creating a perfect balance. Take a look at these examples.
You may also want to consider combining Contrasting Colors. The Contrasting Colors include Blue/Yellow Green/Red Purple/Orange
Overall, texture, color, print, and scale all play a part in how well two fabrics will match. These principles can be explained further in an upcoming blog.
If you follow the above guidelines and focus on creating balance through contrast your coordinating adventures should prove to be both rewarding and a lot of fun!
J&O Fabrics. . . sew many possibilities
If you're in the area, visit our store in Pennsauken, New Jersey, right outside of Philadelphia. The size of a supermarket, we have the largest selection of fabrics in New Jersey! Everything we carry is not on our website, so if you're in the area, check us out and browse our fabric aisles.
J&O Fabric Center 9401 Route 130 South Where Rt.73 and 130 meet Pennsauken, New Jersey 08110 856-663-2121 info@jandofabrics.com
Is there even such a thing as no sew sewing???? Did you know that if you don't know how to sew, or don't have the patience to get out the old sewing machine, there are actually ways to attach fabric to another fabric without threading a needle? If you've only seen the thin strips of Stitch Witchery at your local drugstore, thats only the beginning.
There are all kinds of no sew products out on the market now. There are items such as fusible webbing, spray adhesive and fabric glue. For example our Heat N' Bond Iron-On Adhesive will give instant results without a lot of fuss.
Typically if you're making a garment, there's no easy way to get around sewing. For example, you probably will have a hard time making a prom dress without sewing, but if you're just making simple curtains etc., there are sewing alternatives.
Here are a few ideas for the budding craftmasters! - Hem pants without a visible stitch
- Make quick repairs
- Decorate Hat Boxes/ Shoe Boxes
- Make homemade greeting cards
- Create and Attach Appliques
- Fuse Trims to Fabrics
The possibilities for no sew sewing can be as limitless as your imagination and creativity. Log on to our upcoming Notions and Sewing Accessories Section and explore all of our "no sew" possibilities.
_____________________________________ If you're in the area, visit our store in Pennsauken, New Jersey, right outside of Philadelphia. The size of a supermarket, we have the largest selection of fabrics in New Jersey! Everything we carry is not on our website, so if you're in the area, check us out and browse our fabric aisles.
J&O Fabric Center 9401 Route 130 South Where Rt. 73 and 130 Meet Pennsauken, New Jersey 08110 info@jandofabrics.com
Here at J&O we're constantly thinking of new ways to help our customers and make their shopping experience on JOFabrics.com simple and as effortless as possible. In case you haven't noticed, J&O Fabrics is currently in the process of adding coordinating fabrics to each type of fabric we carry. Everything from our most popular Cotton Novelties, to our wide selection of Upholsteries, will now be featuring two to six coordinates, in addition to washing tips and J&O's very own fabric dictionary.
Take note that the fabrics we choose as coordinates are not always coordinate sets straight from the manufacturer. Noooo, the coordinates we choose are selected with care irregardless of designer or manufacturer and are rarely apart of a collection. However, in some cases if a certain print is apart of a collection, we make sure to let you know.
Shopping for fabric online is a very different experience than wandering through the cozy aisles of a local fabric store. When at a store, you can see the fabrics' color, feel the weight and place it next to other prints to make a judgment. Relaxing at home on your computer, (or at work), you don't have the experience of seeing the fabric for yourself; feeling its' texture and weight. For this exact reason, J&O is implementing a new idea that we hope will help our customers make decisions about purchasing fabric. Allow us to be your eyes and hands by trusting our selection of coordinating fabrics.
Each fabric coordinate we feature on a given page was selected by walking around our huge store in New Jersey with charts and fabric samples; squinting our eyes, saying hmmm while holding prints up next to each other. . , going through the exact process of a shopper. This is the kind of dedication J&O Fabrics has for its customers.
On the contrary, shoppers typically already have in mind what type of fabrics they need for a particular project. We don't know how someone may be using the fabric they purchase, so on the most basic level, while coordinating fabrics at J&O, we first look for solid fabrics that are exact color matches of a similar weight. We know that upholstery fabric is not always used to upholster furniture, and decorative cloths aren't always used to make curtains. So, with some Home Decor fabrics we may add a dress fabric as a coordinate, to offer range in case you may be making something like a handbag or a hat.
Since we have such a huge selection, we at J&O don't assume that we know our customers' taste. While coordinating, we don't infer that all our customers are daring enough to put apples with oranges, if you know what we mean. Our most important goal is for you to know that there are other fabrics that we carry in the same color range. Many ideas of coordination matter on opinion and level of artistic expression. For example, if a lightweight cotton fabric print is black and white, we'll show you other coordinating fabric prints that are black and white. We won't automatically throw in an upholstery weight hot pink floral that doesn't have a hint of black or white, even though under certain conditions it may coordinate great. You see? Most of our suggested coordinates are on the safe side. To see a few examples of our new Fabric Coordinate feature click on a few of the following links.
Overall, J&O Fabrics' goal is to continue to bring the widest variety of fabrics on the Internet at affordable prices. We really hope that our new Fabric Coordinate feature is helpful. If you have any questions don't hestitate to send us an email at info@jandofabrics.com or call us at856-663-2121.
J&O Fabrics. . .sew many possibilities
If you're in the area, visit our store in Pennsauken, New Jersey, right outside of Philadelphia. The size of a supermarket, we have the largest selection of fabrics in New Jersey! Everything we carry is not on our website, so check us out and browse our fabric aisles.
J&O Fabric Center 9401 Route 130 South Where Rt.73 and 130 meet Pennsauken, New Jersey 08110 info@jandofabrics.com
For generations of fabric shoppers in the Delaware Valley and Tri-State areas, the only place to go for fabric was the famous "Fabric Row" located on South Philly's 4th Street. At the time, those shops must have seemed like the only game in town when it came to fabrics. Fabric Row isn't quite what it used to be and it might take hours of searching through small fabric shops to find what you are looking for. Where can you go for a family business environment that is at the same time convient?
With J&O Fabrics you get an ideal combination of family business values and modern ideas. One of the ways this can be seen is at our online fabric store: www.jandofabrics.com. Behind all of the technology that goes into running the web site, however, is a staff with many years of experience that is capable of helping you with virtually any fabric project you have in mind.
The convenience of our web site can't be beat, but if you prefer to see the fabrics in person feel free to pop into our store in South Jersey. We are minutes from the major bridges such as the Ben Franklin, Walt Whitman, Betsy Ross and Tacony-Palmyra. We are also only about 45 minutes from the Commodore Barry Bridge.
Once you find your way here you will find a larger selection of fabrics than we have even on our web site.
Wal-Mart has initiated what it is calling a national pilot project by closing the fabric centers in many of its stores across the country. Many of Wal-Mart's fabric-buying customers are upset at the decision; the convenience and prices that attracted them to Wal-Mart are now gone for the foreseeable future.
The impact on the retail fabric industry
Nevertheless, there are those that stand to benefit from Wal-Mart's decision. Industry analysts estimate that up to $540 million in annual sales could be channeled to other fabric retailers. A portion of the sales that were formerly Wal-Mart's could find their way back to smaller fabric stores and encourage their resurgence. Consumers may rediscover the unquantifiable benefits often found at smaller shops, such as higher levels of customer service and knowledge.
Furthermore, the void left in the fabric retail market by Wal-Mart's withdrawal is certain to be filled with innovative online fabric retailers. This possibility seems very likely as an ever-growing number of consumers discovers the convenience of shopping online. In addition to convenience, online shopping opens up a much more extensive fabric inventory for the perusal of quilters and sewing enthusiasts.
Customer response to our earlier Wal-Mart post
When we first heard that Wal-Mart could potentially be eliminating their fabric departments, late last year, we issued a post detailing some of the questions both we and our customers had. Since that time, Wal-Mart has initiated said pilot project much to the chagrin of many quilters and sewing enthusiasts. Here is what some of them said in response to our earlier post:
One anonymous customer "wrote": "Since they are the only fabric store in my area I AM OUTRAGED!!!! (emphasis theirs).
Another reader vented: "The manager of the Wylie, Texas Wal-Mart told me today they are definitely closing the fabric department and that most other Wal-Mart stores in the area are closing their fabric dep[artments] too.
In response to this development many customers have taken to writing letters of protest or initiating petition drives, while others have begun to look for alternative retailers.
What J&O Fabrics is doing
In light of Wal-Mart's growing withdrawal from retailing fabric, many consumers have been left to look for a new resource from which to purchase their fabrics. What all too many consumers don't realize is that the most convenient alternative for all types of fabrics is J&O Fabric's online fabric store: www.jandofabrics.com.
At J&O Fabrics, we hope to be able to help fill the void left by Wal-Mart's vanishing fabric departments. Far from being an ancillary concern of ours, fabric is our primary business and we continually strive to have the widest possible selection of designer and discount fabrics in a variety of styles available to our customers.
In a recent post we detailed some of the measures we are taking to enhance the shopping experience of our customers. Within the next few months you will discover at J&O Fabrics a completely new way to shop for fabrics online. The innovations we are in the process of implementing will put more fabrics before you than ever before.
Moreover, our selection of such essential items as trim, notions, quilted fabrics, feather boas, sewing accessories and so on is increasing as well, so that with one online stop you will be able to take your project from beginning to finish.
The advantages of shopping with J&O
What are the advantages of shopping with J&O now? Our company began operating over 40 years ago and has established itself as an important part of the surrounding community. Therefore, we strive to maintain the hallmarks of family businesses, namely customer service and an extensive knowledge of our products.
Furthermore, as mentioned above J&O is constantly investigating new ways to improve your online shopping experience and expand your fabric horizons.
At J&O Fabrics, we combine the family business's emphasis on the customer with a keen eye for online innovation. In this way, we bring the tradition of the local fabric store right to your computer screen.
J&O Fabrics has loads of NEW FABRICS coming in this Spring. Many are already here. Indulge yourself in all of our new designer fabrics in everything from lightweight cotton, to patent leather vinyl.
Starting April 11-15, receive 10% off anything on our website by simply typing in coupon code: EN4915 during checkout.
Did you know that J&O has recently added two entirely new Novelty/ Quilting sections? Our new Farm and Flames sections are chockful of Technicolor Roosters and Flaming Red Skull Fabric. Furthermore, make sure to check out all the new prints in our
