shop owner told me that she has customers who toss out all the kit
thread and purchase DMC. Does anyone else do this?

ME ME ME!!!!!!!!!! And it was because of a Dimensions kit that I began this
practice. I was working on Flying Beauties for my sister, and hadn't read the
instructions closely enough to see that the background fern leaves were to be
stitched with one ply instead of two. Obviously, I ran out way too soon. I
tried to convert to DMC, couldn't find that color listed on any of the
conversion sites that I had at the time, finally sat under full sun comparing
every greenish shade in stash (since I had a full set of DMC) to the stitched
work. Came up with what I thought was a match until I started actually
stitching, then gave up on finding it myself and wrote to Dimensions. The good
news was that I got plenty of replacement floss, way more than I needed, and
very quickly.

I also had a couple incidents where the supplied fabric was too small or just
barely large enough for the stitching but definitely not enough for framing of
any kind. One was a Dimensions, a couple were Janlynn.

Since then, I realized that it was much more space efficient also to dump kit
floss and separate fabric. So I have one box of charts and the accompanying
color models, a second box of assorted fabrics, both from kits and separate
purchases from my LNS and INS, and a third box that holds my Darice floss
boxes. Soon I'll need a second box for charts.

Jenn L.
View My Webshots: http://community.webshots.com/user/jaliace
Current projects:
Chicago Skyline (The Needlecraftsman)
Lady of the Flag (Mirabilia)