Fabricana

I took advantage of the BC Day free transit and went over to Fabricana the other day. Here's what I thought of it:

• It's a decent size, certainly larger than what was in my small city in Germany, though not as big as G Street Fabrics or the largest multi-story shops in Paris (hey, much bigger city.)
• Prices seemed pretty normal for Canada, not that I've recently had much to compare them to. (And I'm talking about the marked-down prices; most bolts had an "original" price and a slightly lower one.)
• There are a lot of notions, trims, buttons, tools, etc. The buttons are the carded kind, meaning they are maybe somewhat less high-end-looking than the sort that vendors usually display in plastic tubes, but still good quality, and a lot more reasonably priced. (Let's face it, one hallmark of the homemade is using high-end materials, by which I mean most things that are nicer than plastic, on anything but denim or very expensive fabrics. Not that that's something we're forced to care about, of course.)
• There are big eveningwear and home dec sections, which I pretty much ignored this time. There's a good-sized quilting section as well; I don't really quilt, and I try not to use those cottons for apparel, but I might make an exception for the batiks. I glanced at the flannelette, but it all looked like very obvious children's prints. I also noticed fake fur, rainwear, some activewear (not sure if any of it was wicking), sweatshirting and fleece, random prints on sale, etc.
• Things I liked: chambray and slubby cottons, which are unassuming and therefore could be the best wardrobe builders; rayon batiks, which are very pretty as prints and about the closest thing to rayon challis I can usually find these days; and linen knits, which I sort of regret not buying any of, though they were relatively expensive and in few colors. They also had a fair amount of denim, lots of wool suitings, some meltons and other coatings, and lots of bamboo knits. I didn't notice a whole lot of silk, but that's probably because I didn't have the time or inclination to look at the eveningwear area. I don't remember seeing all that much linen either, aside from the one small stand of knits.
• They have the major American pattern brands, Burda (I think) and a few Canadian ones (Jalie, Sewaholic, and Favorite Things, at least, if not others I missed). I suspect they might stop selling Simplicity and New Look, since they'd pulled out all those drawers and put a deep discount on them; from what I'd heard Fabricland/ville had announced they'd stop selling them too, quite a while ago.

I think it's a pretty nice store overall, but given the distance, I'm probably not going to go there that often unless I somehow really need something I can't find in the city. I might feel otherwise if I didn't have such a fabric stash already.