My wife Eileen runs a small quilt shop on the square in Lincoln, and the Herrschners catalog has been showing up in our mailbox for as long as I can remember. She tears the cover off, pins it to the corkboard behind the counter, and works her way through the rest with a cup of coffee. After about forty winters of watching this same routine, I figure I know a thing or two about how the catalog gets to your door and what it's good for once it lands there.
If you came here because you typed "how do I order a free Herrschners catalog" into a search box, I'll save you the runaround. The short answer is yes, it's free, it's still mailed, and it takes about a couple of weeks. Long answer's below.
What Herrschners actually is
Herrschners has been around since 1899. A fellow named Frederick Herrschner started out selling sewing notions off a pushcart in Chicago, and somewhere along the way he printed up a catalog and started mailing it. The company moved up to Stevens Point, Wisconsin in the early 1970s and that's where the warehouse and the retail outlet still sit today, on Hoover Avenue. They're a family-owned outfit, not some private-equity carve-out, which I reckon is part of the reason the catalog still feels like a catalog and not a brochure.
What they sell, in plain English:
- Yarn, by the bag and by the skein
- Crochet and knitting patterns and full kits
- Cross-stitch, embroidery, and needlepoint kits
- Quilt fabric and pre-cut bundles
- Painting kits, including paint-by-number and diamond painting
- The hooks, needles, frames, scissors, and odds-and-ends that go with all of the above
The kits are what set them apart, in Eileen's opinion. You get the pattern, the yarn or floss in the right color and quantity, and the tools you'd need. For somebody learning, or somebody who doesn't want to drive forty miles to find a particular shade of green, that's a pretty fair deal.
How to order the free catalog
There's two ways. Pick whichever one suits you.
1. Online
- Go to herrschners.com/request-a-catalog/.
- Type in your name, mailing address, city, state, and zip. Email's optional, but if you put it in they'll send you their sale notices, which is sometimes worth knowing about and sometimes just noise.
- Hit submit.
That's it. No credit card, no "first-time fee," none of that nonsense. The form spells it out plain: U.S. addresses only. So if you're up in Canada or somewhere across the water, you're out of luck on the printed copy and you'll have to use the website.
2. Over the phone
If you're not the typing kind, call 1-800-713-1239. That's their customer service line, Monday through Friday, 8 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon Central time. Tell them you'd like a catalog mailed out and give them your address. Done.
You can also go through catalogs.com, which is where you probably found this article. It hands the request off to Herrschners on the back end. Same outcome, just a different door.
How long until it shows up
Their site says "a few weeks," and that squares with what I've seen. Couple of weeks is about right if the catalog cycle is in season; closer to three or four if you're between issues. Don't go calling them on day eight wondering where your catalog is. Mail's slower than it used to be, and a free piece of bulk mail isn't getting priority handling.
What to do while you wait
If you want to see what they've got right now, the whole catalog is available online to flip through, page by page, at herrschners.com/browse-online-catalog. Same pages, same prices, same item numbers. So when the printed copy shows up and you find something you want, you can either dial 1-800-441-0838 to order by phone or punch the item number into the website.
One thing I'll mention: if you sign up for their email list, they'll generally throw you a 10% off coupon for your first order. Worth using. Their stuff isn't bargain-bin priced to begin with — quality yarn and good kits cost what they cost — so a coupon takes a bit of the sting out.
Is the printed catalog still worth ordering in 2026?
That's a fair question, since just about everything's online now. Here's my take, for whatever it's worth.
For somebody who actually crafts — who's planning a project, weighing colors, looking for a winter pattern to give the grandkids — the printed catalog beats scrolling on a phone every time. You can spread it out on the kitchen table, fold corners, mark pages with a pencil, and hand it to somebody else without losing your spot. Eileen's customers who order from it tell her they catch things in the print version they'd have scrolled right past on a screen.
For somebody who already knows exactly what they want, the website's faster. Plain and simple.
And for older folks with eyes that aren't what they were, the print catalog is, frankly, easier to read than a glowing rectangle. That alone is worth the two weeks' wait.
Other free catalogs in the same neighborhood
If Herrschners isn't quite your speed, or you just like having a few to compare, these are worth a look — also free, also mailed:
- Penn State Industries — for the woodworkers, especially folks who turn pens and bowls.
- The Stitchery — leans heavier into cross-stitch and stamped designs.
- Mary Maxim — another long-running yarn and craft kit outfit, similar to Herrschners but with their own pattern library.
The practical takeaway
Order the catalog. It's free, it doesn't cost you a stamp, and the worst case is it ends up in the recycling bin. Best case, you find a quilt pattern or a yarn color you wouldn't have stumbled onto otherwise, and you spend a quiet evening on the porch picking out your next project. That's a fair trade for filling out a short form.
And if you've got a grandkid who's shown any interest in crochet or cross-stitch — order one for them too. A real catalog in the mail with their name on it goes a long way at that age. Speaking from experience.
