News on Solids
We've spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about solids this year. I love how they look in the store and I love to sew with them but, beyond replenishing them once a month, we haven't devoted a lot of mental energy to solids until this past spring. After 9 years, we decided we needed to make a switch from Free Spirit. They're good quality but the colour card keeps shrinking, they've been cancelling the colours we love most, and they can be slow to ship. We had to choose a new brand.
We evaluated every other solid line on the market. We looked at colour cards, the quality of the base fabric, price, supplier experience (speed of shipments, availability of goods). We did some "blind" research (people didn't know what brand they were feeling or seeing), and had chats with our heaviest solids users.
It took a while but we arrived happily at Andover Century Solids. We've been adding them since the summer and have more coming every couple of weeks. Century solids have an excellent hand and are a fantastic quality. The colours are modern and well curated. The cotton is grown in the US, combed of impurities and short fibres, leaving strong threads tightly woven. It doesn't fray like some other brands and is better at holding a straight grain, which means it's also reliable for curved seams. The price is in line with market averages and they are warehoused in Canada so they will ship fast.
We're committing to carrying the full line up. We've been adding them over the last couple of months and have new colours arriving every week. We will also be supplementing with a little bit of Kona and Colorworks while Andover builds out their colour card (already in the works). This is probably more than you ever wanted to know about solids, but we hope you agree that they're a super option, and we're happy to hear your feedback.
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We evaluated every other solid line on the market. We looked at colour cards, the quality of the base fabric, price, supplier experience (speed of shipments, availability of goods). We did some "blind" research (people didn't know what brand they were feeling or seeing), and had chats with our heaviest solids users.
It took a while but we arrived happily at Andover Century Solids. We've been adding them since the summer and have more coming every couple of weeks. Century solids have an excellent hand and are a fantastic quality. The colours are modern and well curated. The cotton is grown in the US, combed of impurities and short fibres, leaving strong threads tightly woven. It doesn't fray like some other brands and is better at holding a straight grain, which means it's also reliable for curved seams. The price is in line with market averages and they are warehoused in Canada so they will ship fast.
We're committing to carrying the full line up. We've been adding them over the last couple of months and have new colours arriving every week. We will also be supplementing with a little bit of Kona and Colorworks while Andover builds out their colour card (already in the works). This is probably more than you ever wanted to know about solids, but we hope you agree that they're a super option, and we're happy to hear your feedback.
