The Fabric Finder Forum is a bulletin board designed to help people locate missing or hard-to-find fabrics. Everyone is welcome to use the Fabriic Finder Forum, however, we want this forum to be useful in helping people find fabric fast so we have a number of rules designed to eliminate "junk postings" and the sort of abuse that occurs in other places. Please familiarize yourself with the "house rules" before posting:
You do not have to register with us to post messages. If you want to, you can because you don't have to fill in your name each time you post a new message or answer one, but it isn't required. Additionally, we don't use your registration information for anything (unsolicited email, etc.) - it's just there for your convenience.
When posting, try and be specific. If you know the fabric manufacturer, print name, color, material, etc. make sure you include it in your post. If you have a photo you can post, even better. (Please keep the file size under 150kb.) This helps everybody cut down the guesswork and locate your fabric more quickly.
Please limit your postings to specific requests for fabrics or
information useful in finding them. Generic responses like "I
think I saw that at somefabricwebsite.com," aren't very
helpful because many of these sites contains thousands of fabrics and
can be difficult to search. The purpose is to help people find
fabrics more quickly than they could if they simply did brute
searches of popular fabric sites, so if you know the fabric is at a
site, please provide a link, telephone number or something that will
help the person searching.
Please communicate with forum partipants via the forum unless they
specifically request that you contact them by email.
"Spamming" (sending of unauthorized emails with commercial
solicitations, offers, etc.) of forum participants is not only
prohibited, but illegal. If a forum participant reports to us that
you are sending unrequested emails, you will be barred from the forum
and you will be reported to your Internet Service Provider and the
appropriate authorities as an abuser. (We log the IP address of every
user of the forum.) If you would like to report abuse, please send an
email to:
Commercial advertisements and solicitations for items not
specifically related to a posting are prohibited and will be removed.
This board is monitored and unacceptable postings will be deleted.
Additionally, if you are found to repeatedly violate the rules of the
Fabric Finder Forum you will be permantently blocked from posting.
Troubleshooting
Occasionally visitors to the FFF report difficulties in posting messages, creating accounts, and other problems. Here are a couple of tips to help you avoid those troubles:
Turn your browser "cookies" on - The FFF uses a small text file called a "cookie" to remember who you are while you're posting messages on the bulletin board. The cookie is only used to store your user name, nothing more (i.e., it's not one of those nasty cookies that tracks your movement around the Internet). If you're using a cookie blocking program or your browser's cookie blocker, you can simply set it to allow a cookie to be added from "www.ahmercantile.com" - that's both the name of the website and the cookie the FFF
will set.
Make sure JavaScript is enabled in your browser - The FFF uses JavaScript to do things like upload your pictures to the bulletin board, set your browser cookie, post messages, etc. If you have JavaScript turned off you won't be able to post messages and you'll get all kinds of weird results. If you're using an older web browser like Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 4.x, or AOL 6 or earlier, consider upgrading to a newer version. Newer browsers are not only faster and more sophisticated, they also have better privacy and security controls. One of our favorite browsers is Mozilla. It's fast, has great features like popup window blocking, and best of all, it's FREE (we like free!).
If you're still having trouble, check your anti-virus, firewall, or ad blocker progam settings - The FFF doesn't do anything that would be a security risk to your system (no file downloads, malicious programs, or funny stuff), but we have found that on occasion an overzealous security program blocks harmless activities. (For example, we once found that a popular anti-virus program was blocking a FFF visitor from seeing a fabric picture because the picture's name was "promo_fabric.jpg" and the virus program thought it was an advertisement.)
Other Fabric Finder Sources
Sometimes you have a fabric that's really tough to find, so it's best to have as many people looking for you as possible. In addition to the FFF, there are a number of other good bulletin
boards and websites that help people locate those rare, hard to find and out of print fabrics. Here's a few of our favorites if you have others, feel free to let us know and we'll post them here.):
Fabrics.net Retail Fabric Search - Sort of a search engine for fabric. You use a form to submit the fabric you're looking for and your contact information,
and Fabrics.net distributes the request among its fabrics sources to see if anyone has it.
FabShop FabSearch - Another fabric search engine. Your submit a search and the system searches among it network members for the fabric.
The system can also be used to search for other items such as notions, accessories, etc.
Gallery of Missing Fabrics - A website dedicated to people looking for particular fabrics. You submit your photo and fabric description to the
website owner and she posts it for you. If someone finds the fabric you are sent an email with the information. The site is updated twice weekly.
RJR Fabrics Search - this is a bulletin board system similar to FFF that's run by the fabric manufacturer RJR.
As a result, the posts are generally limited to RJR-produced fabrics.
eBay's Fabric Category - Okay, it's not really a fabric finding service, but generally eBay has around 10,000 listings in the fabric category, many posted by private parties with rare and unusual fabrics. Giving it a look may be worth your time.
