27 hours in NYC with ATP

Me, in Vogue 1351 with Swatch at Mood

I have the best blog commenters!  Thanks so much for all your suggestions about Simplicity 1314.   I responded to all of your comments.   I have stepped away from the dress for almost 48 hours now and I am feeling better about it already. Thanks to your suggestions I have some new things to try, and I will be trying them as early as tonight.  I need to pack first for the ASE.  My outfits are pretty much planned, but I need to figure out tights or no tights, which shoes, etc.  These are the big questions in life, right?

Antoinette is in town for a work gig, so we met up for 27 hours again.  Last time we met up in NYC, in May 2013, it was also for 27 hours, so there you go.

Random highlights:



We went to Kashi's (Metro Textiles).   I may have bought too much, again.  Kashi's is a very dangerous place for me.  and he is a very convincing salesman.  He has my address on file, so it's easy to ship it.


ATP and Kashi.

Me and Kashi.  The fabric for my dress and the exterior fabric for my bag were purchased at Kashi's in June of 2013 during my visit with Maria (velosewer).  So it was a fabric homecoming, of sorts.


The general scene at Kashi's.  ATP made her dress (a designer knockoff) and her bag.


Fun fact: ATP is 60" tall, so I can use her as a guide to how wide fabric is!
That picture was taken at Paron's  (pronounced Pare-own, ATP asked.)

I cannot believe that I totally forgot to look for the textured sweatshirt fabric while I was there.  How could I have forgotten?  I'm guessing Suzanne bought the last of it anyway after she made her Simplicity 1314 with cream textured sweatshirt knit, but I meant to look!!!

Fabric I bought at Paron's and carried home with me.

We also hit up Pacific Trimming and True Mart and the City Quilter.   and Mood as evidenced by our visit with Swatch. Our feet were tired and aching yesterday for sure.

Today we went to the Japanese bookstore, Beacon's closet (a clothing resale shop) and of course Doughnut Plant.

I came home this afternoon and took a huge nap.

Now it's time for packing, yes? I am driving straight from the Detroit airport to Haberman Fabrics tmw.  The fabric closet just let out a moan.

Be well!

On the lookout/want to trade fabric???

Thanks for your comments on the Santa Hat and my big fabric purge.

The fabric from LA and SD arrived.

It is mostly washed up now but it will not fit in the fabric closet. Hrm.  So it is folded and the little tables have fabric on them again.

LA is on the left; SD is on the right.

Here is everything I'm donating; the service comes on Friday morning and believe me, having all this stuff in my living room is incentive not to buy more fabric. (Kristy, I am holding strong and haven't put any fabric back, yet!)  This pic includes fabric and clothes and books that I'm donating on Friday morning.


Even after all that, there is still some fabric I am on the lookout for, specifically:

• black stretch thin-wale corduroy that does not attract lint and does not wrinkle.
• stretch corduroy and stretch velveteen in  happy colors like turquoise (impossible!)
• black knit with tiny white or cream polka dots (more of a pin dot size, not polka dot size, not seizure inducing.)  (Have not seen this since Gail K's in Atlanta--not even Spandex House in NYC had this)
• stretch lace with small prints that are not too big nor too floral nor depressing nor Italian widow
• red non-stretch denim that is not heavy weight (this is impossible to find! red bull denim is easy to find but is much too heavy weight.  My only hope is you.  Or Kashi.  He used to have purple denim.  I know because I have some but it's not enough to make a jacket.  Maybe I should call him.)
• white shirting fabric that is not see through and doesn't wrinkle and isn't heavy weight (impossible!)
• Dark chocolate brown quality (not Joann's or Hancock's) fleece, enough to make a fleece jacket. I have some from way back when Lucy's Knits was around, and was targeting making a fleece from it, but it turns out it's a rather small piece.

Non fabric:

• Peltex for bags (easy to find)
• 7" or 9" zippers with neat zipper pulls (for interior pockets on bags--where can I find them?  The ones I've been using for my bags were 25cents from a bargain fabric store in SF and I am running out)
• labels with different words on them.  Years ago at Joann's I bought a package of woven, fabric labels with words that were intended for scrapbooking and have used them in bags and on underwear, but cannot find these again.  I have looked at scrapbooking websites but the woven labels tend to be more on the juvenile/baby side.  Also I don't want 100 (or even 20) of the same word, just random words on little woven labels.

So I was wondering, if anyone in the US has any of the above in their stash and wants to trade for fabric in my giveaway pile?

Here's what I have that you might be interested in:

• juvenile flannel
• knit fabric with Bugs Bunny on it (small piece, enough for a tank top though)
• rib knit in green and brown
• seersucker
• This 3 yard stretch cotton that was all the rage at PR weekend Chicago.  I was gaga over it too but the truth is it is just not a fabric that I would wear.

• 
  

(the lighter green above is fine wale corduroy; the rest is rib knit)

So please let me know, if you want to trade or have sources for any of my wish list items. :)    If you want to trade, let me know by 7am EST this Friday morning, Dec 20, as the items will be put outside for donation then.

I cooked.

I baked.

It snowed.

But I did not sew.

Be well!

Post fabric purge & my sewing room tour

Soooo...yesterday I wrote about my fabric binge in SD, following my fabric bender in LA.  I flew back to NJ the following day and then....I started purging my fabric stash!    I have been to a LOT of fabric stores this year (NYC four times,  LA, Honolulu, San Diego twice, Royal Oak, San Francisco) and have purchased a LOT of fabric.  It was like my own personal version of "no fabric left behind".  Since 2012 I have been shipping my fabric back home from my travels so I was no longer limited by weight like I was in 2010 and 2011.  And I haven't been sewing as much, in 2013 so the fabric has been piling up.  I live in a 2 bedroom townhouse and am lucky that one of those bedrooms is my sewing room.  I don't have a garage or a basement, and I don't have any walk in closets, so storage is at a premium. I like to keep all my sewing stuff in my sewing room, and specifically all the fabric in the closets in the sewing room.  This year the fabric was piled up on a table against the wall in the sewing room, and on top of the dryer, under the bathroom sink, and most recently in the hall closet.

I started purging Sunday night, then purged in earnest almost all day on Black Friday.  Seriously, I was purging all afternoon and evening.   EmilyKate had written a post ages ago questioning why she is hanging on to fabric that doesn't inspire her, which has returned to my brain now and then.  It's time to free the old fabric that I've had for years now, and also to release some of the crummier bargain fabric, and fabric that no longer suits my style....including some of the fabric I bought a scant 2 years ago!

  Finally, this is what it looks like.  All the fabric is in the closet.  All the fabric for muslins is in the hall closet. There is no fabric on top of the dryer, no fabric under the bathroom sink. But the fabric from LA and SD is still on its way....I will need to do some more purging to make it fit....


My two closets in my sewing room.

The left hand closet, with my fabric sorted by type, my buttons, and a bucket with my large wax tracing paper.  Now it is much easier to handle the tracing paper, and I can lift the whole bucket out of the closet and see the fabric behind it.


Here is a closer pic of the left closet.  I prefer sorting by fabric type as opposed to sorting by fabric color.  It works better for me when I'm trying to choose fabric to go with a pattern.

Here is the closet on the right, with my patterns, books, corduroy and denim fabric.  There's also lingerie elastic, hangers, mailing envelopes and a lot of the little tote bags I've made for PR weekends.  Oh and a basket of muslins.


And while we're at it, here's the rest of my sewing room.

My desk

A closer shot of my machines and my "inspiration wall"

My Ikea cutting table (with my cutting mats) and my Ikea chest of drawers with my thread, piping, trims, ribbons, etc. It's cut off but on top of the drawers is a little basket with patterns I want to sew soon (bwah ha ha).  Jacqui, you can see Upstairs Hal in this picture too!


Here's the final wall.  That's where a lot of the fabric used to be stacked up.  I temporarily put my mirror there--it is usually between the two closets on top of the step stool.  You can see my dressform Izzy and my ironing board.  Two of the lamps in my room were salvaged from the dumpsters at Princeton.  The junk under the table is my modem and router and an empty safe, ha ha.

Maybe someday this is where my future Elna press will go?   A girl can dream.

So I could make a fabric fasting pledge but I'm not going to.  Just retracting my spending/buying somewhat until I start sewing more again.  There are 7 more months to go on my big work project (it has been 13 months already!  7 more left)  so I don't know how much sewing I will be able to do anyway.  On the plus side, it helps that my next big trip isn't until PR weekend in Austin at the start of May.  TexStyles is an awesome fabric store and I'm sure I will buy a lot there.

My next post I will write about fabric I still want, as odd as it may sound.

I will say that I did not succumb to any of the fabric emails in my inbox this weekend.  So many offers of discounts on fabric and I didn't buy an inch!  Having all the fabric I'm donating in my living room helped a lot.   The donation service is not coming til Dec 20....

Be well!

More surprises: Fabric Shopping at the National City Swap Meet in San Diego

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!!   I'm thankful for all of you reading this blog and your comments and meeting up with you in real life!  It is such a gift to meet other seamsters.

Thank you  for your comments about my grand dash up to LA's fashion district and all the fabric shopping that ensued. If you haven't been, you definitely have to try it!

So that night I took the train back to San Diego.  Saturday morning, Elizabeth, her BFF from college, and I hit up the National City Swap Meet.  Dawn had written about the NCSM in this post on her blog.  She had bought almost 40 yards of fabric and 30 yards of trim for under $100.  I definitely wanted to check it out.  It's only open on Saturdays and Sundays, so I carefully planned the trip around that.


Basically it's like a flea market that has fabric too. 50 cents admission at the door (well, fence) and you're on your way to perusing fabric--thanks for paying for me, Elizabeth! There were some notions there too. The fabric is spread out on tarps on the ground, for the most part, though some sellers have the fabric on rolls. I bought from two sellers, $1 and $2 a yard.

Elizabeth with her new haircut and blue Archer

I found some $2 a yard turquoise ponte knit, brown ponte knit, and soft black and gray sweater knit. Also some textured polyester for making dresses and some loose weave sweater knit for shirts.

I had imagined it to be much larger than it actually was, but that was a good thing.  Also Elizabeth says the vendors don't always go every week.  You never know what you're going to get.

Then we were off to a French restaurant for a yummy brunch, the kind of place where hot chocolate is served in a bowl.  Yes!

Thanks Elizabeth for the fun morning!  It was fun to see you again, meet your BFF and experience some new fabric shopping.

That evening I had dinner with my friends Wolfgang and Michele.  Michele is a gourmet chef....more delicious food!!!

But first Wolfgang and I went to see the seals, and while the seals were not out in Children's Cove, the sunset in La Jolla was amazing.




I flew back to NJ the following day and then....I started purging my fabric stash!    All about that tremendous effort in the next post!!!

All pix from LA and SD are here.

Be well!!

Surprise: Fabric Shopping in LA

I was in San Diego for a work conference but after the conference ended Thursday afternoon, I took the Pacific Surfliner up to LA.  Friday was a full day of fabric shopping with Rachel and Jeanette.  Sherril was going to meet up with us too and couldn’t make it.  We missed you Sherril!

This was my first time in LA's fashion district so it was all new to me.

The day started at 9am at the FIDM Scholarship Store.  I first read about this store on Dana's Made blog in this post .  Such a neat shop!   A wall of fabric in the back for $1 and $2 a yard.  Lots of clothing and jewelry and random stuff like Christmas socks, makeup cases, etc. The employees were all wearing their FIDM Santa hats and now I kind of wish I had bought one to wear at work the week before Christmas.  I bought two pieces of fabric and a boatload of costume jewelry.  The last Friday of the month is 20% everything, and since they're closed TG weekend, it was 20% off during my visit.  

See the sign hanging from the ceiling?  It's pointing to the Fabric Room.

Next we went to the FIDM Museum but they are in between exhibits now.  They let us in to the gift shop where I did a little Christmas shopping.

Next we went to the holy land, Michael Levine Loft, home of $2.50 a pound fabric.  It was pretty amazing.    Boxes full of fabric remnants, then bolts of fabric along the walls.  The windows were open as we pawed through the boxes.



Action shot

Rachel and Jeanette

Mmmm hmmm.

At one point the store was quite full of people.  They let us cut fabric off the bolts ourselves, and if you wanted to cut the remnants smaller you totally could. 

Look at all of that turquoise knit fabric for $2.50 a pound!

Here I bought a little over 11 pounds of fabric.  Turquoise ponte knit!  Brown ponte knit!  Spongy black knit!  It was all good and fun.

The guy running the loft was super super nice and he even took pix of us .

I bought 2 bags, Rachel bought one bag and Jeanette scored with 3 bags.

Then it was time for lunch and then on to some more shops, including the owner of EmBe Fabrics who is vying to be the Kashi of LA. 

"Don't worry about the price!  How much you need?  2.5 yards?  $10."
"A yard?"
"No, for the whole thing!"


And then this store, Button and Trim Expo. 

I think it may have surpassed Pacific Trimming as my favorite notions store.  I was looking for stretch lace trim.  Pacific has maybe 20 spools of stretch lace trim.  Button and Trim Expo has an entire wall of stretch lace trim, all along the right side, almost to the very back of the store (all that lace in the back is the non-stretch lace), in all sorts of colors and widths.  They also had an amazing selection of FOE for 25 cents a yard.  

Yes, almost this entire wall is stretch trim lace, all the way til the second to last column in the back!

And then we went to Michael Levine’s regular store.  In the back they have a bargain section.  Er I bought even more fabric.

We wrapped the day up at a fancy French pastry shop.   J  What a great fun day with Rachel and Jeanette.  We chatted all day long about fabric, fit, patterns, PR Day, etc.  Thanks for meeting up with me!  And a special thank you to Rachel for driving us around and also shipping my fabric home for me.  J

Then I went back to SD for….well, you’ll see…next post!

Be well!

I met velosewer!

I took last Friday off from work because a very special Aussie was coming to the Big City...


It's Velosewer Maria, from the blog How Good is That!

We hit 7 fabric or notions stores in 8 hours, plus lunch and doughnuts....quite a whirlwind!!  and we both wore outfits made by our own hands...my McCall's 6078 shirt and J Stern Design Jeans and her peplum Vogue 8815 top and purple Vogue 1204 jeans (I remembered the purple jeans from her blog!)  The topstitching on her jeans is superb!

We made Metro Textiles our first stop, as you know it is a sewing blogger rite of passage to have one's pic taken with Kashi.  Plus I haven't seen Kashi since May 2012.  Definitely time to revisit.

And while we were there, we met another Kashi customer, Barbara, who asked us how we know Kashi....that led to the discovery that we are all on PR!  We had such a nice time time shopping and chatting with Barbara, who makes jackets to sell.

The shirt I was wearing was made from the fabric that was on Kashi's mannequin on the Friday of PR weekend.  That was the fabric that was less than a yard!!!!

I really enjoyed listening to Maria banter with Kashi and teasing him...


Of course he wants you all to know that he has new fabrics and wants you to come visit him.  And if you've never been to Metro, the background of these pix really give you a sense of the store!

We did really well there.  Keep in mind, Maria has to haul all this fabric back to Australia!

The haul from Kashi

Honestly, every day is a sale day at Metro!
Here is my haul from Kashi's (I had it shipped; it was on my doorstep on Tuesday):

Then it was time for MOOD.

Sadly, Swatch took the day off due to threat of rain and wouldn't be back til Monday.


Antoinette, this is the remnant bin at Mood, under the staircase, but it was mostly Home Dec:

We were able to meet up with Meg who works in marketing for Mood, and she took this picture of our Mood hauls.  Meg is the original author of the Shop the Garment District blog, which Mimi took over when Meg started working at Mood.  The map and info on that blog is excellent--the map gives store addresses, phone numbers, and even indicates which stores have bathrooms!

In the mood foyer:

ha

Here is what I bought at Mood (I had it shipped; it was on my doorstep on Monday).  That bottom piece is the most luxurious piece of stretch corduroy ever, from Alice + Olivia.

Then it was time for the big reveal at lunch! The 7 hour zipper pouch!!

It turns out that the interior fabric is her favorite color, a bright green! Woot! That just happened to be what I chose from my stash.

Maria had gifted me with Tim Tams from Australia ( a quite delicious chocolate cookie covered in chocolate with a layer of chocolate between the chocolate cookies, yes, chocolate chocolate chocolate!) and she asked me to hold up my bag:

Maria had her first ever mac and cheese at one of my favorite Chelsea restaurants, named Cafeteria. Then we went to my favorite doughnut place in the whole world, Doughnut Plant.

Then it was kind of a rapid succession of stores: City Quilter, Pacific Trimming, SIL Thread, then Maria went to Spandex House while I went to Daytona, then we reconvened at Parone.

Pacific Trimming zippers

One of my main goals was to get cotton lining, zipper and thread to match these fabrics from Joanns and Kaimuki:

zippers and thread: SIL Thread
Lining: Parone

Here was much of my haul:



I have already made something from the items above, but that will be my next post.

I bought more of that cat fabric that I originally got at Kaimuki, online from a local (NJ) seller....and happened to find webbing to match for bag making (I didn't even know I wanted webbing to match, but I did when I saw it!):

webbing: Pacific Trimming

This is the fabric from Parone:

I had brought swatches of various with me, so I could find linings and thread to match.

I had a fantastically fun time with Maria. She is warm and witty and caring and kind. I'm so happy I was able to meet her!!  Like I said, for the past 18 months or so she has commented on almost every blog post of mine--that is dedication!

And I am planning on doing a post devoted to my favorite NYC places...in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

Here are your Princeton Farmer's Market flowers for this week:

Maria, I wish we were going to the Garment District again this Friday!
Be well!