Reward for good and faithful service

It was my 15th anniversary at work last year, and the company celebrates these anniversaries once a year for everyone who had their anniversary in the previous year. It's a nice event, and I really appreciate the recognition, because that simple event reminds me that the company is aware of my service and appreciates it. We have our pictures taken, our managers come to the party, and, since it's Germany, we all get a bouquet of flowers.
A nifty additional benefit (but not as important as the acknowledgement) is a gift certificate proportional to the number of years of service. We usually get a certificate to a local mall, and I use the certificate to indulge in some luxury for myself.
Now, my quandry is that there isn't all that much I want from the mall this year - I want neutral fabrics, because I'm participating in Bonnie Hunter's Roll, Roll Cotton Boll and she is coming to the area to teach classes in February, which will require even more scraps. So DH and I agreed we'd use the certificate for miscellaneous needs that we can buy at the mall, and I'd go buy fabric where ever I wanted.
About the same time, the quilt seductress Judy brought a catalog from Keepsake Quilting to a meeting. They had a winter sale on overstocked fabrics, $100 for 100 FQ. Wow!
Normally EUR 2.50 is a good price for a FQ here in Germany, so I calculated the potential customs and VAT costs to see if it would still pay to order from there. It did, and I ordered a couple more things to "spend" the rest of my certificate. The beige neutrals and the McKenna Ryan fabrics also came in budget-priced scrap packs.
Last Thursday the fabric came - AWESOME!!! Here are some pictures. You've already seen the results of my ironing extravaganza, so this post is a little out of sync.

Ordering fabric from the USA

I recently ordered from Keepsake Quilting in the US. When I thought about the customs duty and VAT, I was convinced that it would not be easy to buy fabric affordably.
Quilt fabric tends to cost Eur 12-14 per meter (a meter is about 10% more than a yard). You can find sales as low as Eur 8, but the normal prices tend to be well over Eur 10.
Don't get me wrong - I know that everything tends to be about that much higher-priced here than in the US, and I understand the reasons for it, both social and practical.
Social, because we want to have a decent life for all here, without taking advantage of people in other countries, simply to have the cheapest price. That means taxes are higher, with the resulting increase in benefits.
Practical, because there are simply fewer quilters here, which implies lower volume of sales, which tends to raise costs. Fair enough. Also, if you have to wait for minimum 1 month to get your fabric, and don't know what might be sold out, it can get rather inconvenient when you're designing a quilt.
That's why I buy, and will continue to buy, most of my fabric locally. I love my local quilt shop.
In this case, I wanted to take advantage of Keepsake's 100 FQ package. They use fabric that is not selling as well as anticipated, and offer it at a bargain price of $1 per FQ. The downside is you don't get to choose the fabrics, and that includes the quality. So I bought with trepidation, in case I was paying for poor quality fabric. That did not happen - I got marvelous quality, and a great variety of fabrics. Manufacturers included Andover, Moda, Robert Kaufman, and more.
So what were the costs, after duty, shipping and tax were paid? Here's how it broke down:

• Fabric (2 scrap bags, 1 FQ collection, 1 10" square collection): $172
• Postage: $24
• Duty: none because the total value excluding shipping was less than EUR 150 (was EUR 130)
• VAT: EUR 27.62, which corresponds to a rate of 21.2% for textiles

So I paid a total of EUR 158, and got 30 linear meters of normal width fabric, which corresponds to just over EUR 5 per meter. Not bad, given the long shipping time and the lack of choice.