Few weeks back, over the May 1st and the following weekend I took a short holiday and went to Paris to visit my friend Anna. We originally met through our shared love of books, but as it happens we also share the love for handicrafts. We even both have crafty blogs and you can find Anna's blog here. Anna has lived abroad for few years and I've missed her a lot so it was so great to see her again and spend several days with her. I can't wait until her next visit to Finland during the summer - we already have some crafty pans for that!
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| Us two at the top of Montmartre, next to Sacré-Coeur with the roofs of Paris behind us. Yes, this was a zoom fail, but I still really like it. |
While we were planning my trip, Anna asked me if I would want to go to some fabric stores? Would I ever! So on the second day of my trip we headed to Montmartre to not only see the beautiful mountain known for its artist recidents but also to explore all the wonderful fabric stores you can find there.
The fabric stores we went to see and shop in were located in the southeast corner of Montmartre within just few blocks. I mean, it's basically just few blocks of nothing but all kinds of fabric stores. I'm not sure how many stores I saw just on Rue Briquet, Rue d'Orsel, Rue Seveste, and Rue Livingstone. And it was not all the same things in all the stores - there were stores specialized in clothing and in decorating, stores selling mainly things for theater and dance costumes, stores selling fabrics in three meter pieces in cheep prices, and selling all kinds of buttons and other extra materials you could need. I felt truly amazed, but then again I'm used to having very few stores to choose from.
If you want to go to see them yourself, I recommend taking a metro to the station called Anvers. All the stores were within few blocks from that station.
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| Here are (almost) all the fabrics I got from Paris. For some reason one of the small ones is missing from this pic. |
In all honesty, we didn't manage to visit more than four or five stores. There was so much to see and more dangerously much to buy! At some point I just had to say that my luggage (and possibly my wallet) wouldn't be able to handle more fabrics. More exactly this happened in the second floor of an huge and amazing fabric store called Marché Saint-Pierre - a store with five floors above the ground floor! If you visit no other fabric store in Paris, you'll have to go see this place. It was amazing - or at least the first three floors were and most of the fabrics I bought came from there.
Another store that had a great selection of quilting fabrics was Moline Mercerie just across Rue Livingstone. That store was very adorable and the only reason why I didn't buy anything from there was that I had just bought these fabrics from the other store.
If we move on to the fabrics I bought from Marché Saint-Pierre, the first fabric that caught my eye was this colorful dress fabric. It was very light polyester and will turn into a beautiful summer party dress. I actually have a party in mind to which I want to make the dress for. So now I just need to go pattern hunting!
The next fabrics - and the ones I got very excited about - were these absolutely adorable jerseys! I think there were about twenty different prints and beautiful colors available in that one table of which about half I could easily have chosen, but I ended up getting these two. The yellow dotted one will probably turn into a shirt for everyday use, but I'm still pondering on what the fox fabric will turn out to be.
(BTW, the shade of yellow is bit wonky in that separate photo. The shade in the group photo is much closer to the reality.)
The last fabrics I bought after I was almost sure I wouldn't get anything more were these two thin corduroy fabrics. The photos are repeating the colors horribly wrong, but the upper one is actually blue-turquoise and the lower one is black. I've been thinking I want to remake a old skirt I have but haven't had the right kind of corduroy for it. Now I have and I can actually make two of them at once!
These are the beautiful fabrics I've bought from Paris and I love them. Thank you so much to Anna for taking me fabric shopping. I got so excited about sewing again and can't wait to get behind sewing machine.
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Kävin lomalla Pariisissa tapaamassa ystävää. Samalla reissulla tuli käytyä myös ihanissa kangaskaupoissa ja ostettua montaa iki-ihanaa kangasta. Näistä kahdesta trikoosta, kahdesta vakosametista ja mekkokankaasta tulee tehtyä vaikka mitä ja niitä tuotoksia varmasti nähdään myös täällä blogissa aikanaan.
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