Rokko's and the Punjabi Market fabric stores

I went to look in Rokko's Sarees & Fabrics the other day; while I didn't end up buying anything then, if I had no fabric at home (yeah right), or had more of a need for formalwear, no doubt I would've found something. Rokko's seems to have quite decent prices and a very good selection of certain types of fabrics. I noticed dressy synthetic and silk fabrics, sheers, allover laces in many different weights and colors, costume fabrics of the types you'd use for dance or figure skating, wool suitings and coatings, many velvets and stretch velvets, some faux furs, and, of course, many saris, as one would expect from the store's name. There were also ready-made skirts, blouses, and children's clothes, and fleece blankets at low prices. Some old Yelp reviews of this store said it was very disorganized, but that no longer seems to be the case.

Also, I went through the Punjabi Market area briefly on the way back. I didn't have time to try to do any shopping there, but for the record (and what is not always clear from sites such as Yelp) many of the area's fabric/sari/bridal stores have closed over the past few years, or moved to Surrey, following the majority of their customers. This is definitely true of Frontier Cloth House, Rani Fashions, Guru Bazaar, and Arora Cloth House, which have all moved, some of them quite some time ago. As of early May, the fabric/clothing stores I remember seeing still on Main were Mona Cloth House, Nurmahal Fashions, Amrit Fashions, Wescana, Mohan Cloth House (possibly very soon to close) and a few smaller stores.

December's new fabrics

As I'd mentioned before, I raided the Vancouver location of Gala Fabrics during the last month or so it was open. As far as I know, it did indeed close in the middle of December; I have not been back by it again, but the website says it is now closed. Anyway...
There's what I got. Almost all of it's from Gala Fabrics, the exception being the streaked red knit, which came from Fabrics Etc. In order, they are:

• A wool jacquard skirt length.
• Bemberg lining for the above.
• A short length of heavy silk twill. I'm not sure what I'll do with this, but I really liked the color and the weight.
• Rayon/silk blend jersey; I have some of the Drape Drape books and this might do nicely for something from one of them.
• The aforementioned streaked red knit, which should become a cardigan.
• Linen blend crinkle gauze, for a summer dress.
• A heavy embroidered organza.
• Crushed stretch velvet with a paisley pattern. It's a dark gray that doesn't scan well at all.
• Heavy Bemberg lining. I will probably use this and some of the others from last month for slips.
• Wool/mohair coating.
• English wool doubleknit.

Gala Fabrics Vancouver location closing

I'm disappointed, but given what has to be a very expensive location, I'm not surprised. They are closing in two weeks and have 30-50% markdowns on most of the fabric. Last I heard, whatever is left will end up at the Victoria location. Some things definitely are disappearing, but there's still a varied selection and the store is well stocked — no empty shelves so far.

I've bought a lot; I'll need to update my inventory before I figure out my November fabric turnover, but suffice it to say it's definitely a net positive. I didn't get all that much sewn last month, though I have several projects that are either in progress or that I'm eager to get to. I've just lacked motivation and had other things taking up my time. I hope I'll get back to working faster soon.

Dressew and Button Button

I had a look in Dressew and Button Button today, partly to restock on a couple of things and partly to look for bag parts.

First I went to Button Button, figuring that if I got anything big from Dressew I wouldn't want to carry it around. It's a nice little store. I saw some good-quality buttons that I'd also seen for sale in Germany, and some fancy Czech glass ones that I hadn't seen in I don't know how long. Same brand and design as a kind I had in my collection, but different colors. There were vintage buttons as well. Very nice selection.

Then I went to Dressew. I have certainly heard about it; long story short, seeing it in person I was both over- and underwhelmed. For anyone familiar with Philadelphia, I would call it a Jo-Mar with less nice fabric, waaay more notions, and similar amounts of random other stuff like the old Juniata Park store used to have (after they closed the top floor, now am I getting obscure enough?)

Here's what I'd go back for:

• huge selection of interfacings, mainly fusibles, and also one plain non-fusible hair canvas
• cotton India tape and twill tape; also your usual packaged bias tape, rickrack and such, along with some bias by the meter (I had a faint unreasonable hope they'd have Hug Snug, but no, didn't see it.)
• lots of lingerie elastics in a random assortment of colors; I'd like to bring some swatches and see if they happen to match my fabrics
• buttons, not as nice as Button Button's (though sometimes that's a good thing, if you're trying to make something look like RTW and your fabric isn't that nice either)
• zippers, seriously
• basic notions, like needles, pins, small snaps, etc. Not the best selection of big snaps or other sorts of metal hardware, at least not that I saw, and I didn't see many metal buttons to speak of, either. Lots of ready-made purse handles, though.
• shoulder pads, mostly either covered or foam IIRC
• lining fabrics; they've got lots, but many of them are acetate, something I don't prefer for damp weather. OTOH, there are a few colors of Bemberg and Kasha here and there, and unusual colors of swimsuit lining
• big selection of Gütermann thread including their lightweight silk, but nothing heavy like buttonhole twist... maybe I should try that silk shop on Granville Island?

Things I just saw in passing and couldn't say much about:

• most of their fabric; I didn't notice anything stunning but it's probably good for costumes and curtains, I'm guessing? (I can have tunnel vision when I have other priorities)
• fake flowers
• ribbons
• huge amounts of cheap lace, rattail and other cording, piping, and so forth
• curtain notions
• probably a very good selection of the notions you'd need for some historic costumes, like hoopskirts and corsets, though I didn't look at that aisle closely
• yarn and crochet thread 
• Burda patterns at OK prices

This time they had many ready-made costumes; I don't know how much of that they normally have and how much was just for Halloween. I think they have a reputation for changing out their stock a lot, so who knows how accurate this will all be later on. Anyway, I found zippers, lining, and interfacing for the bag I had planned; the cutter very helpfully pointed out a cheaper, more suitable interfacing than what I'd seen on the shelf.

I do plan on going back to both when I'm a little less goal-oriented. I noticed Atex Fabrics across from Dressew and it should be worth having a look there too.

Fabrics Etc.

The other place I went a couple of weekends ago was this new store, which also has (at this point more complete) Facebook and Google+ pages. It turned out there was a meetup right about the time I got there, so I stayed for that. The location seems a bit far for me to get to often — I wish it were closer, but it's probably quite reasonable for the sorts of customers they mostly want to attract. It's not as much of a special-occasion store as Gala. The focus is still garment sewing, but it might cater more to less-experienced sewers, and anyone who would like to rent time on some (nice-looking) machines they've got; I don't really need to do that, but they do have a nice iron.... There will be another meetup next month (see the Facebook page for that).

They've got a big space with lots of well-organized bolts of fabric, as well-labeled as at Gala. My impression of the selection was: a fair amount of quilting cotton, knits (cotton, wool, synthetic), denim, rainwear, linings, interfacings, home dec fabrics, special-occasion fabrics, and a very good selection of notions, Sewaholic Patterns, and some older sale patterns from the Big 4. I bought a lovely linen remnant to make some trousers I've been meaning to copy, and there were some water-resistant fabrics I'd consider, next time I'm there.

Our Social Fabric

... had a fabric sale this past Sunday. I got there probably an hour and a half after it started; I gather it's a lot less mellow for the first hour or so, when people are trying to get the "best" fabric first.

Anyway, it was in an average-sized storefront, long and narrow; they had large bolts all around the sides, long tables in the middle with cut pieces of fabric in boxes organized by color, and patterns and a few other things mostly in one area near the front. The cut pieces were generally $2/meter unless very small or irregular; I ignored the bolts because I'm not looking for that much of any one thing at this point. I got a jacquard I'll probably use for lining, a bit of navy blue silk, and a moleskin-like print that I may use for a skirt. I'll post photos of those later, once I have time to get them into inventory.

The point of the organization is to keep fabrics out of the landfill by selling them to people who may use them. Depending on what the selection happens to be, the prices can be very good deals.

Knit City

I went to a few different things last weekend and have been meaning to comment on them.

I'll start last first: Knit City at the PNE. (It looks like some of the 2014 content is now gone, so I'm just linking to the floor plan). I could've signed up for some classes, but forgot about it until it was too late. I can't say I was really in the best frame of mind for this either; I'd been shopping two other places beforehand and wasn't enthusiastic about buying more. Anyway, as someone who didn't know much of anything about the local knitting scene, here's what I noticed:

• There were a lot of handpaint/hand-dyed/semisolid yarns. Nice. I'm not particularly interested in doing that myself (no good place to make a mess) but I'm happy to have others do it for me.
• There seems to be lots of hand-spinning going on. I'm not interested in that either, but people seem to have fun with it.
• Thick yarn was far less well-represented than I remember it being in Philadelphia several years ago. I don't know if that's a trend over time or a difference between the two locations. (Or maybe there was some secret huge amount of thick yarn that all sold out before I got there.) While there were a few thicker yarns, I would say almost everything was aran or thinner. That takes more of a time commitment, but OTOH I think anything other than accessories risks becoming too heavy in a thick yarn anyway. Especially in this climate.

I looked around at all the vendors for quite a while, but didn't end up buying anything. I was specifically looking for thicker wool/nylon blend sock yarns. I didn't find any, although there were many nice, usual-weight (say, 7.5 stitches or more per inch) wool/nylon sock yarns, and lots of all-wool yarns in sportweight and thicker. In the end, I ordered what I was looking for from Wool-Tyme instead. When I'm less on-a-mission I will certainly be happy to take another look at what's local.

A couple of style advice books from the library

Recently I've been looking at this kind of book, mainly since the local library has a big selection on the subject. Two I've read recently:

Closet Confidential: Style Secrets Learned the Hard Way. It's written by a Portland blogger. To me, the influence of the author's age group and geographical location seems pretty obvious — there's at least a whole page on how to decide whether a T-shirt is sufficiently ironic, for example. Not that that means none of the advice will work outside hipster enclaves. I think this book is most helpful for suggesting what can successfully be worn together and which items might be particularly useful to have (or not).

Oh No She Didn't: The Top 100 Style Mistakes Women Make and How to Avoid Them, by one of the hosts of TLC's What Not to Wear. This one's pretty heavy on the how-not-to-look-like-part-of-an-outgroup aspect of fashion; that's almost its whole point, and it can be snarky to the point of offensiveness. If you don't want to see that, skip it. Aside from that, you can glean some useful general advice on fit and on what tends to make an outfit either extreme or boring.

On the one hand, I'm glad I was able to get these from the library, without expanding my already-excessive book collection. This particular type of book will inevitably become dated after a while, and I felt that some of the information in each of them was pretty obvious. What I did like about both, though, is that they don't necessarily lead to the sort of all-or-nothing thinking you can get into with fashion magazines: they aren't pushing trends that clearly won't work on anyone but supermodels, or luxury products that almost nobody can reasonably consider buying. The authors are each witty in their own way; I think this is suited to the genre, since it isn't generally a life-or-death subject. Both gave me some ideas to consider as I replace parts of my wardrobe.

New(ish) Marfy

There've been new fall patterns coming out from several brands. This is just one of them, and they aren't really "new" per se; they're just newly listed on the Vogue and Marfy websites within the past couple of weeks. About Marfy

Currently, Marfy issues one catalogue per year. The 2014 catalogue has close to 200 pages of patterns; the first 70% or so is the spring/summer collection (including most of the eveningwear) and the rest is fall/winter. Much of it looks very formal compared to what I would say most Americans or Canadians wear. Part of that may be a reflection of what people want to spend their time and money sewing (or having sewn for them) but part of it may well be that Italians do tend to dress more formally in general. It did seem that way, the one chance I had to compare.

This year's catalogue includes 20 multi-sized patterns, which you can see on the Marfy website. I think this is a great idea on their part, because it provides more of a reason to buy the catalogue sight unseen, even if you never end up ordering any of the other patterns in it. It also gives people a chance to try out the sizing, which is important, as the other patterns you can order are single-size. (From the few patterns I've tried, I'd say for the same approximate body measurements, Marfy tends to use less ease than many of the American companies, and they also seem to design for a fairly tall, long-waisted, long-legged person, as I'd have expected from their size charts.)

The catalogue claims it is inspired by the 50s, 60s, and 80s, and that does come across in many of the designs.  In this latest collection I also noticed a lot of interesting dart placement and diagonal seaming: what I'd call a Y-dart here and here, a related but more complex set of crisscrossing darts, an H-dart (really a French dart with a crossing horizontal seam), and some pointed insets on this long jacket.

As it stands right now, I think there are two or three options for buying Marfy patterns from the U.S. or Canada. One is Marfy itself. The second is the Vogue website (AFAIK you can only order what's listed on the site; you can't request other patterns that are shown in the catalogues but not listed.) A third is, I think, Fashion Sewing Group. The only things I've ever tried, myself, are (a) ordering patterns from Vogue and having them shipped to the U.S., (b) ordering patterns from the Marfy site and having them shipped to Germany, and (c) ordering the catalogue from Vogue and having it shipped to Canada.

Which is most cost-effective source? Check the shipping and exchange rates. I think the Vogue site is a decent way to get the catalogue in Canada, especially since there is no extra shipping charge for it — if you find it on a newsstand in Europe it's 20 EUR, and Vogue charges $35 US plus whatever tax applies at the destination. In contrast, I saw it in one Chapters branch, once, for 70 CAD plus tax.

Gala Fabrics

I checked out the Gala Fabrics Vancouver location today.

In size, it reminds me of an average Philly or New York non-chain fabric store: not extremely wide side-to-side, but it goes back a ways. Unlike some of those stores, it's very well organized, well-stocked but not overfull, and all of the fabrics are labeled with content, width, price, and sometimes origin. The salesmen were nice and helpful.

They have a lot of what looks to be very nice suitings and formalwear fabrics. I didn't focus so much on those today — it was just too hot for me to think about silks or wools — but I noticed Italian suitings, lovely Chinese brocades, different silk types, and many fancy laces and metallics. Over toward the other side, where I paid the most attention, they had quilting cottons and batiks, denim, cotton voile and shirtings, solid and cross-dyed linen and blends, some knits, a little bit of hemp, and some rayon-like fabrics, including Tencel, bamboo, and cotton/rayon blends.

There is a wide range of prices, from the sale tables and remnants up to the really high-end fabrics. This is not a bargain-basement type of store, but I doubt that could work given the location. I think the prices are quite fair given the service, the labeling and organization, and the quality and sources of the fabrics. There are also enough notions that it should be possible to rely on this store to be able to complete a wide variety of projects. I'm glad it's there and I plan on returning.

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.