By Rachel Kurzius
The Washington Post
It’s Tuesday afternoon, and Washington, D.C., event planner Chandon Jones is murmuring math calculations with one of her team . They’re multiplying and dividing, switching from inches to yards at a breakneck pace, before approaching the cutting corner at Joann Fabric and Crafts in Falls Church, Va., with a large bolt of light-brown leather.
Jones has an event the following day, and somehow both Plan A and Plan B for the menus have fallen through. “Now we’re in a panic at Joann Fabric,” she says, and not for the first time. She leaves with the leather she needs, but soon her backup to the backup won’t be there.
The 82-year-old fabric chain is shuttering all 800 of its retail locations, the company announced last week, after filing its second bankruptcy within a year. Industry analysts cite the tough economic environment for specialty stores, and some customers will tell you that quality has slipped, or that the chain had lost focus.
For many Joann faithfuls, though — serious hobbyists such as knitters, quilters and sewists of all levels — the closures represent something sadder and more significant: the loss of easily accessible materials, of community, and of a gateway to handicrafts.
Leon van der Goetz is heartbroken. He “grew up shopping at Joann,” he says. He learned how to sew when he was 8 and then tackled crochet shortly afterward. He worked at the Falls Church location during the holiday season nearly a decade ago. Joann is “where I bought the first materials for my first cosplay. This was where I bought the first yarn that I crocheted with. This is where I really took first steps on a lot of different crafts and hobbies that I’ve had throughout my life,” he says.
While he thinks specialty knitting and quilting stores will help some hobbyists, younger people “would never go to the specialty stores if they didn’t have that intro, accessible place,” he says. “The need that Joann really met, that a lot of other stores don’t meet, is bringing together many different types of crafts in one place.” (He notes that while similarly a craft store, Michael’s focuses more on visual arts than textiles and fibers.)
Van der Goetz stands in the yarn aisle with a shopping cart full of items for a new art and activity room for the LGBTQ+ community center he runs. He disagrees with the cliche that crafts such as sewing and knitting are for the elderly: “Fiber arts have been exploding on TikTok … A lot of younger people are starting to be introduced over social media, and I really see a renaissance.”
As he explains how he dived into weaving because he had so much yarn that he didn’t know what to do with it all, there is a shout from the aisle over: “Nobody can have too much yarn!”
The Falls Church location is full of evidence of operations winding down: A notice on the door says “All Sales Final — No Returns” above another clearly outdated sticker that proclaims “We Are Hiring!” Bright yellow signs dotting the shelves boast discounts on the store’s many items.
Susan Kelsey, visiting the D.C. area from Tennessee, fills her shopping cart with nature-themed fabrics: One looks like a blue sky with clouds, another like rippling water, along with bolts that have fish scales, feather and tree bark patterns. She has another cart brimming with felts ready for cutting, taking full advantage of the liquidation sale.
“Even if it wasn’t on sale, I’d be here buying it,” Kelsey says. “Because you just can’t get the colors that they have anywhere else.”
Kelsey recently began selling her wreath attachments — such as big-eyed felt bunnies for Easter, and elves and snowmen for Christmas — in her Etsy store, Peppermint Sue’s Perfections. “I just started in November, and it might end this soon,” she says with a nervous laugh.
Joann has a much larger selection of fabrics than other brick-and-mortar retailers, she says, plus it stocks holiday-themed wares year-round, which allows Kelsey to prepare her creations and sell them to wreathmakers in advance. Prices at online merchants are significantly higher than at Joann, she adds. Also, there is no ability when shopping online to see and feel the fabric before buying it.
Many Joann customers recall wandering the yarn- and fabric-filled aisles as children, the kaleidoscope of colors and textures beckoning them.
“It was definitely somewhere that my imagination got to sort of roam,” says Rin Llhyd, now an upholsterer in Oregon. She credits Joann, in part, with sparking her interest in textiles.
Although she doesn’t expect the closures to directly affect her work, she does wonder how it will change the broader fabric industry. And Llhyd worries that future generations will lose the chance to make the same discoveries she did while strolling among the assemblage of cotton, fleece, satin, organza, polyester and more.
“For people who love textiles and people who enjoy, you know, just looking at the colors and the textures and the fabrics, it’s exciting,” says Tanny Martin, who lives in Austin and makes her own clothing, as well as bags, purses and items for her home. “You go in there and it inspires you about what project you might want to tackle next.”
Martin doesn’t typically see herself as a creative person. “I was a nurse in my real life, but with sewing and fabrics, there were things I could do that stepped outside of those roles. And that was really satisfying,” she says. As someone who lives on Social Security, making her own clothes is a more affordable way to upgrade her wardrobe. “Joann really ed the people like me who really get a lot out of sewing,” she says.
It wasn’t just the merchandise, either. Fellow customers often share advice about crafting. Employees tend to be enthusiastic, asking people about their projects and offering tips.
Katie Bordignon re going to Joann with her mom as a kid; now she takes her children there. When her daughter was 12, she took up crocheting, so they went to Joann to buy yarn. An employee asked what she was making, “and she can’t wait to tell them, you know, her latest project,” says Bordignon, who lives in Carol Stream, Ill., and sells handmade ornaments on her Etsy store TuscanyCreative. “They are ive, and they’re all crafty people.”
Joann employs 19,000 people, according to court documents. An employee at the store in Falls Church, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the company does not allow staff to discuss internal matters with media outlets, says she is “devastated” by the news. “It’s shocking, it’s sad,” she says.
The employee said the “reverberations of these closures are bigger than anyone can imagine. … This is not just crafting. This is mental health. Senior citizens do this not to go crazy. It’s about a sense of purpose.”
While the store has become a valued public gathering spot in many communities, Joann is not the only place to get supplies. The demise of the chain is not synonymous with the demise of these crafts. But as an entry point to very long, even ancient traditions, it will be missed.
“I feel the connection of 50,000 years of human history as I spin,” van der Goetz says. “And I think there’s a magic in that. And there’s something beautiful in that.”
