The fabric store, as I used to know it, is no more: Hancock Fabrics is officially closed.
At least the Texarkana location is. I heard that the Hot Springs store may be open a little longer. At least until June 30 maybe. Don't know about Little Rock's two remaining stores or Fort Smith's. But they're all gone for good after this summer. After almost fifty years...
Why is this important, Younglings? Well, it just is.
I used to hate going to fabric stores as a kid. Memaw sewed a lot, especially for me because I was an extremely picky dresser. (A girly dress?? Really??) I thought the stores were boring. Except for Cloth World in Fort Smith. On Rogers Avenue, across from Saint Scholastica. It was a huge store with two levels and I would play around in the ostrich and maribou feathers. That building is a Harbor Freight now. All manly and stuff. Very different.
We would also go the Forth Smith Hancock's off Towson Ave near the Phoenix Village Mall. When malls were in their 70s and 80s heydeys. I remember that store more as an adult, when I eventually wanted to learn to sew. Sometime around '78 or '79, I think? Maybe even into the early '80s?
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| My first sewing attempt |
Memaw didn't have to time to teach me by then because she was working at First National Bank, just before it became the first building in Mena to have an elevator. So Mamaw Lee taught me some. "I" made a pair of shorts and cropped button-up top, out of red bandanna material. The shorts were really cool; they were like "wrap" shorts. She did most of the work but I did try. That was also the first summer I really learned how to ride a bike. I think I was more interested in that.
Then in the late spring/early summer of 1985, (a really BIG year for me but most of that is in another soon-to-be-posted blog), Memaw and Mamaw Lee bought Ye Olde Fabric Shoppe from Alicia Hendershot's mom. On Sherwood Street right across from the depot. (The Friendship House coffee shop is there now.) I was kinda shocked at this venture, but I saw it as a cool opportunity to expand my wardrobe. (I wasn't as picky a dresser by that time, either.)
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| The first shirt I ever made, and can more or less still get it on. |
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| Look up any picture of Jon Bon Jovi circa 1985 and he'll be wearing a long duster coat. So, I had to have one, too. |
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| I made the shirt on the left out of another wacky print Memaw had at the store. The first day I wore it was to school with a pair of jeans I had spotted with bleach so they'd looked ripped. Which is exactly what they did: I sat down in first period Journalism and the seat tore right out. Luckily the shirt was long enough to cover it. I had to call home and have someone bring me another pair of pants. I remember having the suit on the right, but can't remember what it looked like or what happened to it. |
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| Yes, that's THE Applonia Kotero from Purple Rain.. I think my camisole was yellow, the skirt was purple, & the blazer was a print that incorporated those two colors. If memory serves, I made two other blazers with that pattern. One was a light blue satin, much like the Heart sisters were wearing in their videos at the time. I still have the pattern, but I cut the picture off the envelope and put it in my "Look Book", a 4-inch binder full of magazine and catalog photos from the late 80s to the early 2000s. I call it "Me Before Pinterest". |
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| More Appolonia. I made the one with the longer pants out of an aqua blue tropical print. |
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| More random patterns. I think I used the one on the bottom left to recreate Julia Robert's brown polka-dot polo game dress from Pretty Woman, but those details are fuzzy. |
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| I made the top dress, second from the right, out of blue denim. Wore it a lot in college. The bottom pattern is another one I obviously made but don't remember anything about. |
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| Along with the duster coat, you had to have vests. Memaw made the leopard print; I made the black one a few years later. |
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| I had an urge to make a caftan and sit around my crappy first apartment in Little Rock pretending to be Elizabeth Taylor I suppose. I was proud of the gold trim on the color. |
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| Random patterns again. Top right, made the top out of red leopard print, and made several pairs of those stirrup pants, a premier staple of the 80s wardrobe. Bottom left made from three different types of black tropical print. |
Fast Forward: 1993
Even though I had a Bachelor of Music Education and a K-12 teaching license, the band director job hunt wasn't going so well and I was working at Wal-Mart in Mena and back living at home. I'll boohoo about all that in another entry some day (maybe) but late that summer Memaw saw an ad in the Democrat-Gazette for a manager trainee for Hancock Fabrics in Little Rock. Desperate to get out of Mena again, I applied. And got it.
Hmmm....
This meant moving back to Little Rock, a town I totally despise. I like to visit but I hated living there. Both times. But at least this second jaunt would involve a better living arrangement, renting a room at a nice house in West Little Rock, owned by a fellow MHS graduate. And I had a real job that would pay better. I had saved $600 so I wasn't totally broke when I got there.
So...I went to work that first day at the Cantrell Road store, and not ten minutes in my first thought was:
This is the biggest mistake I think I have ever made in my entire life up to this point.
Seriously. Nothing that bad had even happened. The nice lady who worked the morning shift was kind to me, even though I found her a bit...sheltered? But it was a gut instinct. One of those Star Wars-inspired "I've got a bad feeling about this" moments. I think I even walked over to the Kroger across the street on my lunch break to use the payphone to call Memaw.
"This was a bad idea. I just know it."
And I was soooo right. My boss, the evil-queen-trainer-from-Hell, Sue...somebody....I've blanked her last name out...had (I was told) a reputation for running off manager trainees. And THEY were soooo right. She was probably the bitchiest bitch I have ever run into my life. (Pardon the language, some of y'all are old enough by now.) She was worse than the self-proclaimed asshole I worked with at Wendy's three years prior to that. She was HORRIBLE!!!
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| One of items I made while I was working at Hancock's. Copying Christina Applegate's black halter dress at the final party in Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead. |
I thought I could tough it out. Only six months of training and I'd have my own store. She found fault with EVERYTHING and never gave praise for the slightest good thing. I didn't think I sucked THAT bad. It's not rocket science running a fabric store; I watched my mom do it for eight years and she'd done a fine job. I did my best. It was NEVER good enough. I really thought I could do it.
Meh...not so much. On top of that, I'd met this GUY....(not that guy. This was Pre-That Guy.)
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| Made the robe on the right while I lived at Memaw's (another movie copy) and the towel and turban on the right while I was at Los Alamos. I lengthened the sleeves on the robe, making them more bell/kimono like. |
(In a Pontiac, no less...)
I made it there, somehow through the terrible weather. I was there to inventory the University store, with a lady who had no sense of smell (???), and later on we inventoried the North Little Rock store on JFK with the latest trainee whom they all thought was just greatest person ever. I roomed with that person, (again, I can't remember the name), when we traveled all the way to Cape Girardeau, Missouri to inventory their store.
The trip was fun, but I couldn't hang with the new "Pollyanna" of Hancock's. *grumble*
About two weeks later I was done with this fiasco. It was the only time in my life that I took Johnny Paycheck seriously and completely flaked out. I just...didn't show up to open the store one morning. I strolled in about two hours later wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, a pair of ripped jeans, and my purple Chuck Taylors and said something like, "I overslept."
Translation: "I really don't give a sh*t."
I turned in my keys and quit/was fired. I truly have no regrets about that. #sorrynotsorry
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| The first thing I made for Poppa Don. He used to wear vests a lot, and this actually took some work. I had also replaced the back of one of his older ones with some hemp material we got at a place in Taos. |
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| This was another Los Alamos creation, I believe. Out of a really neat wool plaid. I accidentally washed it and it shrank. A lot. |
Life went on after that, of course, as it most often does. The next two to three years are topics for another time, but I'll focus on the real point of this story and my future association with fabric stores.
Although I did sew quite a bit during the manager trainee days, with the sewing machine Memaw and Poppa got me for Christmas in 1992, I didn't really sew much again until Poppa Don and I moved to Los Alamos. He was gone a lot, doing shows, so I had to get creative with my time while Aunt Kaytea and Aunt Cassie were living with Nana. It was just me, Stormy, Bug, and Sonny at the duplex on 34th Street. I made this thing:
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| The "Cameleon": A combination dress- shirt-hoodie-tent. One of those festival hippie creations. |
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| The first shirt I made for Poppa Don. He wore Hawaiian shirts a lot, so... I made him one, using the pattern on the right. |
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| Also created at Los Alamos, inspired by a costume worn by Demi Moore from Striptease, though mine isn't quite as skimpy. I wore it as Ms Mac also. |
The sewing machine went into storage during our years at Sanford and didn't come out again until the move to DeQueen in 2003. I made a dress for the Renaissance-themed Spring Fling at the college in 2004 and a few Ms Mac costumes. I bought fabric and notions at Walmart. I got several patterns from the flea market just east of town, where I also bought a lot of the books that are in library and two of those big fleece animal print blankets. I spent an entire afternoon going through every single pattern (there were hundreds) and came away with about twenty. I remember how fun pattern purges were at Memaw's store. You could keep the patterns but had to send in the envelopes in the beginning, and you got so much store credit for them.
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| One of Ms Mac's Halloween costumes. I was a variation of Lily Munster. We played a benefit for Governor Mike Beebe at Senator Barbara Horn's house. It rained, and we had to play on her front porch. |
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| The Renaissance Spring Fling dress. Pattern from the Flea Market. I crocheted a circular vest to go over it, which I also still have. |
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| One of Ms Mac's first costumes, for Valentine's Day at Caliente. It has heart-shaped symbols on it in pink foil. I wore it with a pair of bright red bell-bottom jeans I ordered from Newport News. There's a really cool enhanced digital photo of me at that show - it's...somewhere around here. |
I don't know if anyone in this world will still be sewing at home when you read this, but when the time comes just give them to charity or even learn to sew. Poppa Don was trying to learn how when we first met. When the Zombie Apocalypse happens, you might at least have a decent wardrobe.
Or something to start fires with. Patterns are good for that, too.
I do remember getting the sewing machine repaired at the place right next door to Boulevard Kennels and Wisdom Animal Clinic, but it still didn't come out of the closet much, because we got busy being Groovetones and Ms Mac didn't have time to make her own groovy look anymore. She mostly ordered it online. When we moved to The Plantation, the only time I dug out the machine was to hem the curtains for Poppa Don's stage. I think I sewed Velcro on some skirting, too. As of this writing, that was the last time I used it.
When Poppa Don had one of the ladies at Hancock's sew the big staging skirt, I went in to pick it up. I had only been in the Texarkana store a couple of times before that, to look at pattern books one day, just because I hadn't done it in ages. I think I even bought a couple of small things. Buttons, maybe. Some thread? When I heard the company was closing for good, I thought, "Well. How about that. Han-CROCK's is done."
I'd put away my grievances about working there long ago, so I was kinda sad. It's always bad when businesses that have been around for decades have to close, for whatever reason. Sometimes it's technology - Kodak, Blockbuster - brought down by digital cameras and online streaming. Hancock's was in danger of dying out years ago, even when I was there. They used to just have fabric and notions, then they had to start selling more crafts and decorating items to compete with Michael's and Hobby Lobby, and of course...Walmart, which was always Memaw's nemesis. That's when I stopped going, I guess. It was too much like the other stores. And it got more expensive, which is another reason people DON'T sew anymore. They can buy clothes for less, and have them much quicker. I still know a lot of women who quilt, but that alone can't save the fabric industry.
I watched the signs go up in the last months: Store closing: 35-50% off. At first I dropped in to look around, and suddenly understood why they were going down. $65 for an accent lamp?? From a fabric store?? That was with the discount. A sewing box for $59? A plastic box covered with fabric? You could make one for less.
Hmmm....I opted to go back when the lady at the counter told me they would be open until the end of June.
So on Thursday, June 23, I had the day all to myself and that was my fourth stop after Goodwill, Sonic, and Excalibur (who was having their semi-annual sale!!). I was there for a good while, though I'd been in the night before to buy buttons for a pair of Poppa Don's camo pants. I'd also bought 3 yards of blue velour with gold stars, a can of Scotch guard, a rolled hem machine foot (always wanted one), and a heart-shaped green leopard print keychain. (Keychain? I told you they were trying to compete with the craft stores.) The store was pretty bare even by then. There was nothing in the back portion of the store except fixtures, and most of the designer fabric was gone. And the service was ssssllllooowwww.....even with two people on registers. But then again, why hurry?
During my daytime visit, I found some sweater knit material, and was still able to get 2 yards of Star Wars print flannel. Someone must have bought the entire bolt of the one with the First Order print on it. I got a skein of purple yarn and two different sizes of double-pointed needles. I wanted bigger ones but that was all that was left. (Hancock's got into knitting materials long after I was there.) I got a zipper to replace one that was broken in a dress I bought for 59 cents at Name Brand Clothing in Hot Springs last year.
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| My last haul ever from Hancock's Fabrics. |
Like I'll have time to sew, but Poppa Don will be out on his Bad Motor Scooter a lot so I'll need to find something to do.
And yes, that's a Daenerys Targaryan, the Mother of Dragons, costume I found. As pricey as patterns are these days, these were a steal. Even See & Sew's aren't $1.99 anymore. All of this for less than $40. Without the 80%, 70%, 75% discounts, that probably would've ended up around $250. Some of the patterns were originally about $16 a piece.
I also met the aunt of an HSU classmate of mine (Sean Hill!). Very nice lady. I'm sorry she's out of a job. Her husband passed a while back and she came out of retirement to keep herself busy. It's a shame that she'll have to find something else. That's the other sad thing about store closings. People are out of work, unless the company is re-structuring. That's "kind of" what Hancock's is doing: They were bought up as part of Michael's and are still doing some online business. They still have a Facebook page and they still have a website:
When I was in Longview in July, their location was still open but selling out as fast as they could. I didn't have a chance to go in. (Like I needed to buy anything else.)
Here it is almost three months later, and my bag of goodies is still sitting on the floor in my closet. Maybe now that the first of the semester has died down and I'm more used to my new schedule, I'll reach into the bag and figure out what I want to do with all that stuff. I promise (....) to create something really great, and perhaps one day you'll have to chance to snatch it up for yourself.
That's going to be a REALLY long time from now. ;)
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