Fabric Shopping in Japan: Liberty!

I found this store completely by accident; I decided to walk down one side of the street rather than the other so as to stay in the shade, and, idly glancing through the shop windows, saw this:



Of course, agonizingly, the store wasn't open for another ten minutes. So I went and browsed through a children's clothes store across the street, afraid to roam further afield in case I lost my way and couldn't make it back. I did cleverly take this picture for directional reference (the shop is at the very corner of this street and the main Nippori drag):



When the shop finally did open (on the dot of 10 a.m., just as the sign said), I was the first one in the door -- to look at this:



and this:



and this:



The gentleman who was running the store when I was there was very helpful -- I asked permission to take these pictures, which was originally refused ... until I whipped out my handy Dress A Day business cards, after which everything was copacetic. I tried to explain "blog", but since I often have a hard time explaining "blog" in English, my hand gestures were not up to the task. So when he said "Magazine?" I said "Yes, computer magazine," and left it at that.

I ended up buying three meters of this:



Here's the selvage:



I am thinking that some of these patterns are Japan-only ... I haven't seen them anywhere else, not on Ebay.co.uk or on the new Liberty website. And it does say pretty clearly "Printed in Japan". Does anyone know for sure?

As Liberty goes, this wasn't hideously expensive -- I think it was about 2900 yen/meter, so about $29. Cheaper than Liberty in the U.S., that's for sure -- if you could even find it!

I accepted a business card but am unable to read it -- am posting it here for any scanlation help:



This store is the one closest to the top edge of the card, on this little map (you can get your orientation from the train station). Worst-case, you could always print this image and give it to the hotel concierge or cab driver -- that should get you to one of these stores!

Aside from Liberty, the store carried a lot of very high-end cottons -- including that red and yellow French-provincial stuff that handbags are made from, whose name I always forget -- and some wools and linens. I didn't spend a lot of time browsing other than among the Liberty, since I knew buying that piece of Liberty had already strained my fabric budget a bit ...

While I was paying for my fabric, the clerk even offered me a piece of chocolate. This is my kind of fabric store, I tell you.

Japanese Fabric Shopping: Tomato

So, yes, I bought a little fabric in Japan. (I know you're all surprised by that.) Last Tuesday morning I went to Nippori Textile Town.

Small digression: I know it seems scary, the idea of running around a strange city, by yourself, not knowing a word of the language (okay, I can say "sugoy" which I *think* means "awesome!") -- but, really: it's okay. It's exhilarating, even. When you're traveling somewhere familiar you don't notice even a tenth of what's going on, because you don't have to. But when everything's strange, everything is important, and you notice every detail. The colors matter, and the expressions on people's faces, and even the flow of the air around you -- they're all clues as to where you are and what you should do. If traveling somewhere so different doesn't make you feel incredibly awake and alive, you're doing it wrong.

But: back to the fabric:



When you walk into Tomato in Nippori, the first thing you see is the half-wall of 100-yen fabrics, presided over by the winking Tomato. It's pretty crowded around that wall, as you might imagine. When I was there on a Tuesday morning, the crowd was split pretty evenly between younger, student-y looking women, and sweet-tiny-grandma-type women. (I was the only non-Japanese in the store that morning, as far as I could tell.)

There's a lot of other stuff on the first floor which I neglected to take pictures of; mostly linen-y things.

The second or third floor (I forget which) has silk:



Hilariously, each floor plays different music. The ground/first floor plays upbeat J-pop; the knits floor (which I also neglected to photograph) was playing some Justin Timberlake; but the silks floor was playing classic big-band jazz. Talk about setting the atmosphere!

I spent most of my time (and money) on the cotton-prints floor:



You have to pay for your purchases on each floor separately. It seemed to me as if they did take credit cards, but I had brought a lot of cash with me, so I used that, instead. (I like to leave a country with less than $20 of that country's currency on me. My bureau drawer is not an effective foreign-currency hedge.)



One nice touch was the display of completed projects and patterns that lined the stairwells and landings at each floor:



The store staff were very friendly, and, even though (as I said) I don't speak any Japanese, I managed to get by just fine with hand gestures and lots of smiling -- even when I was trying to express tricky things like "I want all that's left on this bolt, please." (However, if you need more than ten fingers to express how many meters you want, I'm not sure I can help you -- although I'm really impressed!)

So enough of the travelogue: what did I buy?



I finally found the elusive orange bandanna print; I think this was 300 yen/meter:



And some brown/red/teal heavier cotton, which will almost certainly become a skirt:



Some black floral/dot fabric, which is probably going to be a Duro Jr.:



And this orange leaf-and-stripe fabric, which is also going to be a Duro Jr. (Sorry, I'm obsessed.):



Lastly, I picked up about 8 meters of this stripey fabric for my friend Jilli, aka the "Lady of the Manners" at Gothic Charm School. Wondering why anyone would need 8 meters of black and white striped fabric? Go check out that site and not only will you know, you'll want some for yourself ...




Tomorrow: directions and photographs of the store in Nippori that sells LIBERTY.

Robots! Robots! Robots!

Nora *and* Theresa sent me links to some robot fabric that I *must have*:




It's at CraftyPlanet -- click the image to visit their store. I haven't bought any yet, though, because I don't know what it wants to be, and thus don't know how much I need. (I would normally just suck it up and buy five yards, but this fabric is EXPENSIVE.) I'm hoping it decides it wants to be a skirt, so I can get away with buying two and a half yards.

If you already know what you'd like to sew out of robot fabric, maybe you need twill robot trim from SuperBuzzy:





And while I'm talking about robots -- I "collect" songs that have the word "robot" in the title or that are sung/played by bands with "robot" in their name. (What can I say? I like music made by happy machines.) If you want to subscribe to the Yahoo! Pipes feed I made (which looks on Hype Machine for songs fitting those criteria) I think that link will let you do so.

Like Taking Window Treatments From a Baby

I just bought two of these curtain panels from Target. They are going to be a dress. Seriously, I'm not even kidding. Two panels should be about four yards @ 44" wide. I would have purchased three, but that's a little pricey. What with shipping and all it's about $10/yard, but I don't care, my jones for alphabet-print fabric in perfect colorways knows no bounds.

Supposedly this is a nursery pattern, but again, see me with the not-caring. What's the downside of making a dress from this? Small children will find me strangely comforting?

There's a really lovely pink kind of cattail-ish print, as well, that would be just as nice for a grown-up girl (or retro boy) as it is for an infant.

I draw the line, though, at transforming the changing-table cover into a hat.

[Oh, and while I'm thinking about it -- you might have seen my name on an article in the latest CRAFT: magazine, about turning a tablecloth into a circle skirt ... many thanks to Arwen who liked the idea!]

All's well that ends well

So I'm heading home from London today, but I had half an hour last night to go to Goldhawk Road -- and all you Londoners who told me to go there? You were right. I owe you all a drink.

I went to Classic Textiles (44 Goldhawk Road) where they had Liberty (in a very, very snug basement) for £5/yard! (Or possibly £5/meter, not sure.) They also had some limited Varuna wool and some £10/y-or-m Liberty as well, upstairs. Mostly florals, to be sure, but plenty of the abstract and figural prints, as well.

Sadly, though, I was The Difficult Customer, because I saw a roll of the pattern above (Splash) which I've wanted FOR-ever .... behind every other roll of Liberty. And so the poor guy, at closing time, had to shift about twenty rolls of fabric to get and cut me my four meters-or-yards. But he was nice about it, possibly because an even More Difficult Customer was in the shop, trying to get swatches of about fifteen different shirting cottons. (Him: "Now, y'see, I need to you cut me bits of all these, and make me a list, so I can call you up and say "I need 11 meters of #2," right?" Shopman: Nodding uncomprehendingly. Him: "Now, y'see, I need you ...")

The woman at the register also confirmed for me that Liberty wasn't making any more twill. "And their prices are silly," she said. I nodded sagely.

I did some brief poking around in some of the other shops (as they were vacuuming and rolling down grates) and saw this incredible flocked linen wallpapery print, but at £9 a yard-or-meter I couldn't justify it. I didn't have my camera with me so I took some not-so-great camera phone pictures ... remind me and I'll post them when I get home.

Home. As much as I love London, I'm looking forward to being in THAT place again!

Dear Liberty

I finally got over to Liberty, and ... well, it was disappointing, to say the least. They've reduced the space given over to dressmaking fabrics again, to about 3/4 of what it was the last time I was there, which was itself about 3/4 of what I saw on the visit before that!

Look at how anemic (or, as I'm over here, anaemic) the shelves are:






And when I asked about twill, the clerk (who I recognized from previous visits) told me that Liberty isn't making twill any longer -- "no one was buying it," she said. Well!

So, being in the UK, I've decided to write a sternly-worded letter to Liberty, in the hopes that they will reconsider their decision to essentially abandon the home dressmaker ...

Dear Mr Williams:

I visited the dressmaking fabrics department of Liberty in Regent Street this week. Liberty is usually the highlight of any trip I make to London, and the fabrics department is the highlight of any trip to Liberty.

However, I was tremendously disappointed. Not only did I walk away without having made a fabric purchase (which has never happened before!) I was also greeted with the dispiriting news that Liberty has decided to stop producing their designs in twill.

Although I have lately seen Liberty prints available through partnerships with other manufacturers (Lands' End, Converse) and I think that is a lovely development, I would hate to see Liberty abandon the home dressmaker, especially as interest in sewing and dressmaking has been surging recently, on both sides of the Atlantic.

I was told that people haven't been buying the twill, and that's the reason for stopping production. Might I suggest that people aren't buying it because it is so difficult to obtain? Liberty does not sell online, and I have been hearing from independent shops in the US and Australia that Liberty is also reducing the number of patterns available to them. If you want to sell your fabric, you ought to be making it more available, not less! I buy at least twenty yards of Liberty lawn, twill, and wool fabrics a year (and I buy at least sixty yards of fabric total in a year, and often more, mostly online), and I would buy more Liberty if more patterns and weights were available to me. If I could, I'd sew with nothing BUT Liberty!

Liberty is by far my favorite fabric. The prints are outstanding and the quality of the weave is unmatched. I, and many other home dressmakers, will be heartbroken if this downward trend in the number and availability of patterns continues.

Sincerely,

etc., etc.

I'll print this out and mail it on real paper (more likely to be taken seriously) when I return to Chicago. So suggestions welcome in the meantime. I wanted to start it with the very British "Sirs:" but since the name of the head of customer service is available, it didn't make sense not to use it. If you'd like to write or email as well, details are here ...

London Fabric Shopping

Through no actual planning on my part, my hotel here in London is an easy twenty minutes' walk from the amazing Shaukat Fabrics, so guess where I ended up fairly soon-like after arriving in London? That above is a picture of ONE of the Liberty Tana lawn walls; please to be clicking here and here for other views.

I bought half as much as I did on my last trip, but, considering that 1) the dollar has sunk quite a bit since then and 2) I haven't exactly sewn up all I bought last time, I don't feel as if I wasted my opportunities.

I bought a nice big chunk of this lovely Varuna wool:



And three other pieces: two of the cricket-balls print (possibly called Schlesinger? Anyway, I want to make a BIG shirtdress in that) and one (about three meters) of the neuron print (that's not its actual Liberty name, but that's what I call it).



I could have bought fabrics that I *didn't* already own in other colorways, fibers, and weights, but what would be the fun of that? In an ideal world, I'd only wear Liberty print everything ... the same patterns in wool, babycord, cotton lawn, and cotton twill, over and over again.

Yesterday I went to the INCREDIBLE V&A "Golden Age of Couture" show -- if you have any, any, any chance of going, GO. Go twice, if you can. I am not joking here, people. There was so much there -- it just went on and on like a really good dream -- and it was beautifully mounted, up to and including little line sketches on the information cards so that you could better understand the construction details. Cassie (from the V&A's web site) and Melissa kept me company (and indulged my geeking out over all the pockets), and it was just wonderful. (Disclosure -- Cassie got us free tickets, but I would have definitely paid the special entry fee anyway ...)

Yet to come: a trip to actual Liberty, and possibly Muji -- anyone want to tell me which branch of Muji in London is the best?

Vegas, Baby!

I'm going to be in Las Vegas for about 36 hours early next week ... and since I don't drink, don't gamble, and can only eat two or three pounds of shrimp cocktail before feeling like a beached gray whale, I was wondering if anyone had any leads on fabric stores convenient to the Strip?

I dimly remember being pointed to a fabric store in Vegas before, but of course neither my actual brain or the distributed brain I've cobbled together through OS X and Google have turned up anything ...

Reader of the blog Kris would like to know, too, so if have suggestions, would you leave them in the comments?

Thanks!