Fabric Visionary

 

I spent a glorious hour or so at The Fabric Store in Sydney yesterday. Sigh... swoon.

This is the third visit I've made and I love that store more and more every time. I always find what I'm after, even when I didn't know I wanted it.

Yesterday's purchase was the gorgeous silk twill above. You can see the beautiful twill weave better in the shot below.

Oh, the colours, the drape, the price, the generosity.

I cannot say enough about the staff at The Fabric Store. They are incredibly helpful and approachable without crowding you. And generous! I won't describe or name the assistant that was helping me with my purchase as I wouldn't want to get her in trouble, but let me just tell you a little story. I was chatting with said assistant about the potential washability of the silk she was about to cut for me. She suggested, as is their policy, that the fabric be drycleaned only, but that I could always try washing a small swatch to see how it goes. She says to me as she's about to cut, "I'll just throw in a little extra so you can have a play". Dudes! When I got home and pulled out the fabric it seemed an awful lot. She gave me a whole extra metre! Whaaaaaaat! That's a serious swatch to play with. Me thinks I'll get two garments out of this rather than one.

This silk is destined to become Victory Pattern's Roxanne, Version 2.

I'm ashamed to say I still haven't cut into the fabrics I purchased at my past two visits. Oh the shame, oh the stashing. It's weird too as I purchased all three of the following for specific projects.

This glorious swimsuit lycra is planned for that Bombshell on my Spring/Summer Sewing List. Can I admit to being terrified of sewing with lycra and making a ham of this project? I really wanna Bombshell but I fear my sewing with stretch skills are not up to it. Oh how I loooooove this fabric. It is exactly what I had in mind.

At a Sydney Sewists Social in early 2013 I purchased this most awesome shirting with another Negroni in mind for P, this time short-sleeved. I'll admit to being slightly battle-scarred from my last attempt. Plaid matching, ughhhhh. This fabric is the most ridiculously soft and light shirting. Perfect for a casual summer shirt.

This one was also purchased at that same event. In fact, I saw Gabrielle whacking down this stunning cotton sateen (with a little elastine) on the counter and I thought "now, I need me some of that". It turned out Gabrielle was also earmarking this one for shorts and we actually had a little wager on who'd get theirs done first.

Ummmmmm. Well I say Gabrielle welched, as she made this amazing dress out of hers. Me, I messed up how much I needed and think I may be a bit short. I was so deflated I never even layed it all out to see if it would fit anyway. I need a kick up the ass.

I'm energised to revisit all these projects now. Let's see how I go...

And finally, yesterday was the fabric shopping trip that just kept on giving. As I was having my silk cut, I spied a roll of wool coating the likes of which I only dreamed of finding for my New York Cape. It turned out that the whole roll had been purchased, but they went ahead and found me a few metres at the Brisbane store. It's winging its way towards me as I write, ready for stitching this winter.

The Fabric Store... that is all