P&B Textiles
The company originally started in 1963 with two owners, Charles Prager and Irwin Bear, and it was called Prager & Bear. Irwin Bear bought out his partner in 1978, becoming the sole owner. The name was later changed to P&B Fabrics, doing business as P&B Textiles. The company was bought in 2008 by Edward and David Odessa, whose family has been in the textile industry for generations.
In the 1960s and 70s, P&B Textiles acted as a distributor for fabrics produced by other companies. It began designing and selling its own fabrics in 1980, and hired its first full-time fabric designer, Jennifer Sampou, in 1989. The company now has several in-house designers, who work on their own collections as well as working with guest artists to create a stunning array of fabrics to please any and all quilters.
When P&B started to design quilting fabrics in 1980, there were about a dozen suppliers of quilt fabric, and now there are over 100. There was also a very limited range of prints and colors, which is the polar opposite of what you can find today.
Besides quilt shops, P&B also sells to manufacturers, making bedding, children's clothing, medical scrubs, decorative ribbons and other manufactured goods. The company's specialty, however, is definitely fabrics for the quilter.
P&B fabrics can now be found in thousands of quilt shops around the United States, and many more internationally. P&B is known for its quality of fabrics, and for a wide variety of basics, traditional, contemporary and children's fabrics. You can find a listing of quilt shops that carry our fabrics on the web page for each individual collection