Laurie Smith, best known as the southern Interior Designer on Trading Spaces with the fiery red hair and spitfire personality to match (love her!), has launched a collection of textiles sold at Hancock Fabrics. You can shop for them online, or if you're like me and need to see and touch fabric in person, you can visit the Hancock Fabrics nearest to you. In my case, it was in Fitchburg, MA.
The store is very disorganized, a total chaotic mess. I would never go back now that I've seen the Laurie Smith line and purchased many of her textiles in person - I'd spare myself the visit of trekking all the way out to Fitchburg and simply shop Hancock Fabrics online. The cashier held us up at the register for nearly 25 minutes (I timed it) sorting out a problem their register had 'talking' to the bank when we swiped our card. The manager surfaced about 10 minutes into the transaction with a very relaxed look on her face, like it wasn't a problem that we've been standing there already for 10 minutes. Another 10 minutes passed and things still weren't working properly. We offered to just go to the ATM and return with cash, but they explained that the transaction may have already gone through to the credit card company so we needed to stick around. After 25 minutes, I grew restless and they let us leave without even signing for the transaction. The purchase was over $180, I couldn't believe a manager would let someone walk out of the store without verifying a purchase was truly paid for. In the end, the money was deducted from our account, but my husband and I vowed to never return to this location.
In addition to the register madness, it took about 20-30 minutes until someone was free to assist me at the cutting table, also very frustrating.
The brick and mortar store aside, the website seems to be very easy to navigate and all of the Laurie Smith fabrics are sold online, so there's really no need to visit a store. Take it from me, the LS fabrics are lovely. I made window treatments and pillows from mine and couldn't be happier. Way to go, Laurie!
So, I'm mixed about how to rate this store - the actual store is horrible, the fabric from LS is great. So, I'll give it 3 stars. If I was rating this based on the store experience, I'd rate it a 2 (it would have been a 1 star shop had it not been for the terrific 20% sale they were running) and I'd give the LS fabrics a 5 because I love her color palette - green, chocolate, orange, violet, and yellow, inspired by 50's-70's design, it really pops.
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