The best souvenirs - Parisian fabric haul

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!

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.

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.

The first fabrics I bought are the only things I didn't buy from  Marché Saint-Pierre. I got these 45 cm x 45 cm quilting fabrics from store called Au Bonheur Des Dames on Rue Livingstone. (They unfortunately have no website.) They had a lot of all kinds of other fabrics too, but I especially loved the somewhat big selection of quilting fabrics. There six were the ones I decided to get for my quilting project mentioned in my previous post.

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.

Markets and fairs

 This Saturday I went for some craft supply shopping. The biannual Helsinki Handigraft Fair was in Wanha Satama (a lovely old harbor building made out of red bricks) Saturday and Sunday and it happened that on Saturday there was also the Eye, stitch, stitch, jacket - Kitchen entrepreneurs crafts and craft supplies market (Silmä, pisto, tikki, takki – Keittiönperäyrittäjien käsityö- ja käsityötarvikemarkkinat) in the Kiseleff House right next to Senate Square, so there was plenty of great reasons to go. The weather was nice, atmosphere great in both places and company the best you could imagine. Here are few photos I took during Saturday.

Before noon we enjoyed a lovely late lunch at Ciao Caffé at Kiseleff House. So good fresh buns they had!

First at the Kiseleff House. It felt like piece of the old Kiseleff bazaar had returned from the day
when watching the stands from above. The atmosphere was so lovely and relaxed.

The Wanha Satama was much more crowded but it was still fun to see all the the different craft supplies and finished products sold at the different stands. It has been quite a long while since I've last been at one of these Handigraft Fairs.

There were many clever and beautiful displays of products at both places.
One of my favorites was this earring mannequin at the Plan B stand.

And what did I buy, you may ask? Here is what I bougth:

A Schacht Hi-Lo Spindle (I can't remember from whom I bought it from tough...) and some wool to spin from Lahitium ex machina. This lovely color dye is called Cipher North American. I have never spun any yarn but when I saw many of the sellers spinning yarn at the market and as my shopping partner promised to teach me I decided I want to learn that too. You'll be the first to know when I start to do my own yarn!

I also bougth some yarns from Lahitium ex machina. The top two are basic wool-nylon mix sock yarns and the green-purple one is actually called Lothlorien. A LotR geek approves! They had also other lovely names for their yarns/dyes, but unfortunately non of my other yarns had a special name. The lower two yarns are 100% wool and were actually a free gift as I bought three things from their stand. That was super generous from them!

At Wanha Satama I stopped by the stand of KOTOliving and bought the first number of their magazine because I missed it when it came out. I almost ordered it too, but then decided not to do it yet. Maybe later tough as this is definitely one of the most interesting Finnish magazines I've seen in a while. And the people at the stand were very lovely too. :)

Last but not least I got some washi and masking tapes from Teippitarha. It was definitely one of the most crowded stands in whole Wanha Satama and it took me two attempts to actually get close enough to see their products! And then it took me ages to actually choose what I wanted to buy. These were some of my favorites, but I'm sure I'll have to order  some more in the future.

So there, that's how the shopping part of the day went on Saturday. The rest of the day was spent with friends playing boardgames and WiiU so that wasn't bad either. In general it has been an all around weekend.

PS. I've done all first three pages for the March my journal challenge, but I have decided not to post each days page separately here. Instead I'm going to post them in batches and I think I'll do the first of those posts in few ways. Oh and remember, it still isn't too late to join the challenge and catch up if you would like to do that!

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Lauantaina oli käsityöshoppailupäivä ja kävin sekä Käsityöläismessuilla Wanhassa Satamassa että  Silmä, pisto, tikki, takki – Keittiönperäyrittäjien käsityö- ja käsityötarvikemarkkinoilla ihanassa Kiseleffin talossa. Mukavassa seurassa ja hyvällä tunnelmalla varustetuissa paikoissa päivä sujui mitä miellyttävimmin ja mukaankin tarttui niin kehräysvälineitä eli värttinä ja villaa, villalankoja, kuvioteippejä kuin ensimmäinen KOTOliving-lehtikin. 

PS. En viitsi postailla Muistikirjamaaliskuun sivuja tänne yksitellen vaan teen sitten yhden keskitetyn postauksen, kun niitä on vähän usempi valmiina. Ensimmäinen sivupostaus tullee varmaan jo lähipäivinä. :)