I have been caught out by Abakhan remnants before - it is quite difficult to thoroughly check a large piece of fabric when you're standing holding several other pieces - but one of the ones I bought last week is in a league of its own.
It's roughly 4 metres of cotton jersey. I washed it last night, and took it out of the dryer this morning. When I started wrangling it to try and fold it I found, firstly, a rough seam with large felt tip lettering alongside it about a metre in from one end. Bad. Then, another metre along, I found another seam. This one doesn't quite go right across the fabric, but has been made by a triangle being taken out and the raw edges then seamed.
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I have never seen anything in an Abakhan store to say that their remnants might be seconds (and this is waaaaaay beyond a second anyway), although experience has shown that this is sometimes the case. I bought one piece that, when unfolded was actually L-shaped, with at least half a metre square taken out.
How does this happen? I've seen fabrics taken from the bolt with a seam across - although I've never seen a seller do anything other than cut at that point and start re-measuring from there - but this second seam means that it could not have been put onto a bolt without it being obvious right from the start that there was something wrong.
But more than that, how does any assistant cut a piece like this and think it's OK to fold it so that nothing untoward shows, and put it in with the remnants?