Star Wars Simplicity patterns being taken off the shelves?

The local Hancock Fabrics is out of #4450, but I saw one at Wal-mart. I don't really need one, and even at 50% off it was still $8, so I left it where it was.

 

it's werd because in montreal we have all simplicity star wars patterns .. maybe here .... Lucasfilm don't deleted the patterns for this moment ....

 

My friend said:

Okay, I went to work yesterday (& today) and we got in the new simplicity book for "late winter" (not out yet!) and I flipped to the costume section and lo & behold, you could see where they had CUT OUT the star wars pattern pages! because there was about a quarter inch left in the book of the page and it had "leia's sleeve" on it!! So obviously, they were not planning this discard at all!! and it must have been spurr of the moment, for them to print those pattern pages and include them in "late winter" book, because if they were planning it, they would have skipped printing them!
So anyway, still no news on the "reason why", but I checked and *so far* the McCalls "sleepless knight" pattern is still available.

Wacky stuff!

 

Well, I guess it's a good thing that I happened to grab the jedi pattern at Jon Ann's when I was there!

I have a feeling, though, that after this is all over, we will still be able to find the patterns on ebay or something like that.

 

They are not taking down the lavender pattern, are they?

 

I believe that pattern is made by McCall's and seems to be available still.

 

Okay, I figure I should weigh in on this because I'm the softlines supervisor at Jo Ann Stores in northern California. We recieve on a regular basis (a few times a month) corporate RTV requests (RTV= return to vendor). That's just Jo Ann lingo meaning "deface it and toss it". Only sometimes do we actually pack it up and ship it back. Pattern RTV's happen every couple of months or so. We take out the flagged patterns, their shelf labels, and numbered dividers and rip them up and throw them away. This usually happens with patterns that are a few seasons old or are poor sellers. I don't know about the pages being ripped right out of the pattern books, that's something I've never encountered before in my three years with the company, but corporate surprises us all the time with unusual requests, so I won't discount it. I don't know if this has happened in my store or not, because that's not my department. I'll find out tomorrow when I go to work and report back. It could be just part of the normal pattern cylcle-through.

 

(I was the one that pointed out this happening over in my Lj and Padawansguide started this thread over here)
I know that pattern companies do discards, it is very normal, especially around Halloween, due to all the new patterns! but, this was NOT a normal "discard", we were sent an email before we opened and it stated that had to immediatly remove all those patterns from the store and destroy them... no sending them back to the company or anything. Which is another normal thing, most of the time you don't have to send the patterns back to the company, just destroy them, but this email voiced that we better get rid of them fast!

 

They are not gone the numbers are just being changed like the Wizard of Oz patterns were. 4450 is now 0579, 4426 (the kids patteren) is now 0578. I haven't found the new equivelent to 4443 yet.

 

Thank you. I went to Hancock's last sale, fought traffic and nearly blew a gasket in my brain when I couldn't find the patterns.

 

Argh, I wish I had read these lasts posts before I went to Joann today! I did find the Leia/Padme Peacock one misfiled, so I bought that.

 

They are gone.. They had us pull the 0 numbers too... the 0 just means it's a display pattern

 

These contradictions and weird gyrations are driving me nuts.

Will someone talk to Steve Sansweet about this issue and get something more official about the fate of the Simplicity patterns?????

 

Well - I guess none of us here are in contact with Mr. Sansweet on any kind of regular basis. It would be cool to get the mystery solved!

I guess we are all kind of just speculating that it could be a licensing issue. I don't know that anyone knows for sure why the patterns were pulled. Sure, things get discontinued, but the reason I thought it might be a licensing issue is due to the apparantly abrupt way they were removed right at peak selling time - Halloween. It also kind of reminded me of an issue we had in a store I managed. We had some hosiery packages that had Naomi Campbell on the cover as well as some internal sign marketing. I guess the company was not able to have her renew her contract with them, and we suddenly had to pull all this hosiery off the shelves and destroy the marketing.

 

Be ready to see these popping up on ebay as OOPs.

 

Okay, the Simplicity Patterns Book in Singapore still display the 3 SW Patterns (not including the White Battle Outfit as it was gone a book or 2 ago) but I didn't get to ask the counter if they have the patterns at hand as they were busy and this month, it's Butterick that is going for 50% Off (sorry but I had stopped buying patterns at its original price; instead wait till it goes on sale for 50% Off or Buy 2-For-Price-Of-One etc).

Any news for those who stay outside US on whether the pattern is still available at your local Spotlight, Walmart etc etc?

 

I'm outside of the US, Germany to be precise
I contacted an internet shop for patterns here in Germany and she told me that the SW patterns where taken out of the simplicity program.
Too sad because I totally missed this patterns.

 

try Ebay !

 

It appears that the pattern has been discontinued. I went into JoAnn's today and went through the new Holiday/Winter book and the pattern is no longer listed, and this was not from a page being torn out. Right after Halloween I picked up what they had left in their diplay as there were none in the pattern cabinet.

I agree that it is sad that Simplicity thought they needed to pull the pattern. As has been said; there is always ebay.

 

I went out looking for the Simplicity 4450 pattern at my local JoAnns in Owings Mills, MD (suburb of Baltimore) and they didn't have the pattern. I checked a nearby Wal-Mart on my way home and the interesting thing is that the Simplicity book had the pages of the SW patterns cut out, yet when I checked the drawers where the patterns are kept, they had two packs of the 4450s. I snatched those blickys up and will head out to other Wal-Marts in my area to see if they have anymore as well.

 

Great news! At least for those of us in Australia

I went in to Spotlight and found TWO Star Wars Patterns!

Simplicity 4450 which is Anakin ROTS, Obi-Wan ROTS and Tion Medon. For females who want to use it as a base for Jedi remember it is a Men's pattern so it will require some alteration.
Simplicty 4443 Which is Padme's ROTS peacock dress (ncluding headress) and Leia's ANH hooded gown.

These are currently in print

 

I was very fortunate to get 2 of each, the adult sized and the child sized patterns. I didn't expect they would be around for long. I found a fabulous Vogue pattern #V8003 that looks great for the corset and skirt "seduction gown".

 

http://store.sewingtoday.com/cgi-bin/voguepatterns/shop.cgi?s.item.V8003=x&TI
I thought this would be great to mod for the "Seduction" gown, ie black corset and black lace skirt. Just bought it Sunday during Joann's $3.99 Vogue pattern sale running thru Dec 1 . What do you think? Would this work? But they do look like they could do the trick. A little help for us.
***There are lots of patterns that are not so specifically and blatantly LFL licensing infringers. I think that's one of the things that LFL might have had problems with, ie. Models that resemble the movie character and names that make it look like a LFL approved item. Copyrights are one of Lucas's strongest holds on the franchise. Without them, STAR WARS franchise would have folded before ESB. He's now one of the richest guys on the planet, but its a neccessary evil to maintain the intergrity of the entity. I hate it, but understand it and don't begrudge his corparation that or the thousands of folks that work for LFL and would lose their livelyhood if the material was allowed to be too deluted by knockoffs.