French General Store

I've been purchasing from the French General Store online for years now and I'm never disappointed with their kits and vintage beads selections. Kaari has an amazing eye for color coordination and although I never used their kits as designed, I appreciate her efforts to help beginners as well as advanced designers find the right combination of rare beads without spending a fortune. The customer service is top notch. Never ever have I had a problem with any order resolution. I've had a couple of orders not packed properly and no question asked, her team immediately replaced the items and even added extra. I absolutely LOVE this store. Although I've been a metalsmith for a couple of years now, I still reach for these beautiful old beads and create fun yet delicate charm bracelets, earrings and necklaces. I'm not sure what the issue is with these bad reviews...I promise, you will not be disappointed and they are human too, so they might make a mistake, but they will offer superb customer service.

This is a well hidden lovely boutique for one of a kind beads, notions and French General fabric. Nice customer service that gives you all the browsing space & time you need to take in all the treasures within. Off street parking available on side. Ring the doorbell!! limited hrs. only open on Saturday.

This is the single best source for my old French linens and textiles. They offer wonderful consulting services, classes and retreats. I love every one of these knowledgeable and friendly people. They even taught me how to run my own indigo vat.

What a magical place. The jars of buttons alone can occupy hours of time. Add that to the beautiful vintage textiles and wonderfully crated selection of stitching materials and you could easily spend half a day wandering through.

Beautiful fabrics, funny salespeople! Great samples & displays. Always enjoy visiting.

This is truly one of my Happy Places!

Love EVERYTHING FG

very expensive

I ordered a deluxe embroidery kit. The kit is beautiful. I loosened the screw on the embroidery hoop completely and slowly pressed it around the bottom hoop with the sampler to begin my project and the hoop broke. It is brand new. I am very gentle. The most disturbing issue is trying to contact someone - anyone - by any method - to ask how to handle this situation. There is no way to contact them online and no person answers the number listed online. Shame on you French General. What are you trying to hide?

I must say, for my first experience with this organization it was certainly memorable.

Sadly, it was a total disaster.

Today's workshop should have been postponed or refunds issued. You sent us an email saying prepare for rain and that you would have pop ups covering the dye vats. Nope. The pop ups did not go up until we were drenched to the bone in cold driving, rain, and they were too small to cover us and the tables, so most of us were subject to rain and buckets of water falling off the edges of the tarps. Still, some of us were "dye-hards" and tried to keep going with a positive attitude.

After dyeing one piece, I went to get lunch to warm up. The Farm to Table lunch promised and paid for turned out to be soup from a carton like you get at Trader Joe's (it was on the counter) and cold quiche.

The workshop was supposed to go from 11 to 4. Not only did they start about 20 minutes late, but the team started packing up the materials around 1:00 p.m. At that point the things we needed were being put away and it was clear that we were expected to give it up and leave having spent less than half the time promised and paid for.

In their hurry to leave and avoid getting soaked, other patrons grabbed whatever fabric was on the tables. My fabric - both the fabric kit with at least five pieces in it, which I paid for, and some I brought from home disappeared. The instruction handouts blew away or were tossed so we didn't even get those.

We were vaguely told there would be a chance to come and dye fabric after the new year, but we would have to provide our own prepared pieces and that there would be no instruction. Well, without the handouts, that will be hard.

Since we did not have the full time promised, we didn't get our fabric in the free for all, and we didn't get the lunch we paid for, at the very least, we should be offered a free repeat class, not just a chance to "dye fabric in the back alley."

I am CERTAIN that the French General has amazing classes This wasn't one of them.

I am also certain that they didn't bring the rain, but if they warned US to be prepared for mud and PROMISED they'd be set-up with pop-ups, why didn't they.

Frozen and Disappointed.