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.

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.