MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
If you love to sew or do other projects with fabric, you might have already headed to your local JOANN store to pick through what's left. JOANN's, for the non-crafty, used to be the country's biggest fabric retailer, but it went bankrupt. And this week, it started closing some 800 stores.
INGRID CRAYPO: I've been to a couple of the stores, and I walk out and I cry.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Ingrid Craypo is a professional maker of things with fabric.
CRAYPO: I have 10 sewing machines. I've done everything from uniforms for the University of Maryland to mascots for all of the sports teams in D.C.
MARTIN: Craypo says she will miss a well-stocked fabric store. She says the craft stores closest to her don't have much of a selection, and she calls online shopping for fabric a nightmare.
MARTÍNEZ: Bet you didn't know, Michel, that JOANN Fabric started out as, of all things, a cheese shop in Cleveland during World War II. German immigrants Hilda and Berthold Reich sold cheese and fabric in a little store they ran along with their friends, Sigmund and Mathilda Rohrbach.
MARTIN: I did not know that. And you know what, A? None of them was named Joann.
MARTÍNEZ: No. But the store was named after their daughters, Joan and Jacqueline Ann, and it sold more fabric than cheese.
MARTIN: And back then, making your own clothes was often cheaper than buying off the rack.
MIKE EDWARDS: Sewing is the lost art in America.
MARTÍNEZ: Mike Edwards, vice president at JOANN's in the early 2000s.
EDWARDS: At the time, we were testing and rolling out sort of superstores, meaning 30 to 40,000-square-foot fabric stores.
MARTIN: But the fabric market was shrinking.
EDWARDS: A lot of people don't own sewing machines anymore.
MARTÍNEZ: A sales boost, though, during the pandemic only delayed the inevitable. And now Allison Lince-Bentley says she'll shop online to teach sewing in Brentwood, Maryland.
ALLISON LINCE-BENTLEY: A lot of online retailers have gotten a lot savvier about how to communicate fabrics - showing videos of things, showing people stretching the fabric or moving the fabric.
MARTIN: Bentley says crafty people will eventually find a work-around to get the fabric they need.
LINCE-BENTLEY: People can go to thrift stores. They can also channel "Sound Of Music" and turn their curtains into play clothes. There's a lot of things that people can do.
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MARTIN: I guess that's why they call them creatives. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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