If it's of interest to you, fellow sewing people, you can apparently now get little kits with small pieces of the historical chintz 100% cotton prints from The Historical Fabric Store!
I've made several gowns and a whole bunch of head scarves from these fabrics, and while I absolutely do not need pieces this small (30cm x 27cm) they would be fabulous for quilting!
https://thehistoricalfabricstore.com/en/product/cotton-chintz-fabric-kit-2/
Cotton chintz fabric kit- 2 - The historical fabric store
Chintz fabric kit. Various fabrics from Dutch heritage. 30x27cm pieces. Tygkit med tryckt bomullstyger (kattun). Olika tryck från Dutch heritage. 30x27cm bitar.The historical fabric store
Julia reshared this.
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Sini Tuulia • •@Sini Tuulia it's a good thing that things are odd with the eur conversion, so I'm not tempted to buy anything, because I. Don't. Need. Anything. From. That. Site. Right. Now.
:D
(what do you mean “why have you filled a cart, if you don't need anything”?)
(I'm not going to actually *order* that cart. not today)
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •@valhalla It's funny how I have pretty much all of their catalogue memorised by now (There's a couple of new items!) and yet I feel the need to gently browse their site every now and then. 😂
I could probably make a couple of nice teal, pink and cream headscarves, to round out what I already have, but it's not like I'm going to just get them! I must ponder them for several months and then get them, as a treat 😶
It helps that the postage is enough that I don't feel like buying just a small amount of whatever, and thus need to have an actual well thought out list!
Elena ``of Valhalla'' likes this.
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • •@Sini Tuulia and by I don't need anything right now, I mean that I already have a *new toy* to be happy about today
(now, I'm glad that by getting sewing thread and needing some sunlight to see whether it is a good match for the fabric I have I caused what appears to be a week of rain. I'm really glad about the rain. Maybe a bit less about the delay before I can start sewing, but I still have other projects :D )
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Sini Tuulia • •@Sini Tuulia I have a couple of handsewing projects I already have (a lot of, vintage, received as a gift, YAY) fabric that I wanted to colour match (thus the various silk shades)
and then I have some linen I want to make stays of, thus the two weights of linen
and then I *may* have added a few more spools because shipping costs are a thing and thus if I buy all of the thread I'm going to need for months it's cheaper and I'm saving, right? (even if I may end up using it years in the future, because it was bought “in case I'll ever need it”)
right?
Mx Amber Alex
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •and here I was having a heart attack when I saw 250€ for a metre of silk satin… but even at 125 I still can't afford it.
That's the most silk variety I've seen in a fabric store to date (i.e. the only place I've ever seen that sells silk brocade anymore) and still doesn't have what I need 😭
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Mx Amber Alex • • •@amberage To be honest I've only ever found the cotton and linen fabrics to be even remotely affordable to me. A friend bought 4m of nice very expensive wool from there to make a skirt and while I'm happy for her, I did keenly feel the difference between Job Money and Disability Money. 😅
I assume you've also browsed Sartor Bohemia? They seem to change out their silk selection a bunch, though the also have a lot of viscose/rayon brocades for less strict use cases
Mx Amber Alex
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •I had not! I know next to nothing about sewing and fabrics that I haven't learned in the past few months, so all the insider advice on where to go for buying what hasn't reached me yet.
Much better, silk and pricing wise, tho still no black grosgrain silk :o but I'll keep them in mind next time I need silk satin without selling my kidneys for it
Mx Amber Alex
in reply to Mx Amber Alex • • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to Mx Amber Alex • • •@amberage It's a bit wild in the year 2024 to be saying so, but I suggest subscribing to their newsletter! There's often a smaller stock of whatever for a limited time. They're pretty good about not spamming, too. I've absolutely adored all the Bohemian linen, it's so nice when something has an Öko-tex certification! And they're VERY nice quality.
Based almost entirely on vibes I think a lot of the silk sold (anywhere) is in jewel tones? Not a whole lot of black, beyond the basic black taffeta.
Mx Amber Alex
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •black silk (satin, grosgrain, moire, shantung, etc.) is a staple of (mens) eveningwear, but I suppose all the men's tailors buy wholesale and not a lot of it goes to retail? I suppose.
I've been wanting to make a bowtie from grosgrain silk, but alas, no such luck 🤷♀️
For long ties, I'm not a big fan of satin silk, it's too shiny and can easily look cheap and like polyester, but finding anything like paisley, madder or macclesfield printed silk is also pretty hard, so… in German we call this "sitting between two chairs"
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Mx Amber Alex • • •@amberage Might be. There's probably also like two dozen secret boutiques that sell their very limited but high quality stuff to tailors', and they don't even need to have online shops to stay afloat!
Sitting between two chairs! 😆 Yeah... I also don't understand why it's so difficult to find a nice, normal, entirely reasonable paisley (with any kind of certification, either Öko-Tex or organic) in a country that would ship to me. Pls, just a nice paisley!
Mx Amber Alex
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •and since Google turned itself into a dropshipping search engine, it's impossible to find anything on there… I can google "cashmere stripes" and get sweaters from Zara instead of traditional morning dress trouser fabric; google "macclesfield" and get printed ties instead of fabric woven with raised geometric patterns, etc.
And the most useful store I've found so far, stoffe.de, isn't very helpful either, as 90% of their stock is polyester-cotton blend stretch jersey for baby clothes :/ if I weren't disabled, I'd apply to a tailor for apprenticeship just to finally get to work with good fabrics 😬
Mx Amber Alex
in reply to Mx Amber Alex • • •about paisley tho, if you can work around the website being in German, stoffe.de have a few oeko-tex certified paisley cottons in the 10–20€ range and they ship to Finland for about 8€ (I just checked)
https://www.stoffe.de/paisley-stoffe
Paisley-Stoffe - Stoffe günstig online kaufen » stoffe.de
stoffe.de - Stoffe Meterware & DIY online kaufenSini Tuulia
in reply to Mx Amber Alex • • •Sure it's much cheaper than many fabric shops, but jesus christ.
Mx Amber Alex
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Sini Tuulia • •@Sini Tuulia @Amber Alex ouch, I've bought fabric multiple times from one of their portals and I had a few bad experiences with fabric sold as cotton while it was plastic too, but not that many
OTOH, I learned to avoid most fabric whose code includes “poso”, which iirc is what my bad experiences had, so maybe that's why I managed to only have a few.
I suspect that at those prices most fabric doesn't come from Europe either, so they don't have big reasons to add provenance data, I guess.
I still buy from them, but only as a last resort, basically
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Sini Tuulia • •@Sini Tuulia @Amber Alex If you find the Secret Tailor's Shops please let me know too!
Between a few online shops and my local fabric (drug) dealer I think I can get most of the fabric I need (even if not always at a price I can afford - looks at the local seller), but I still haven't found a place that has the canvases and tapes that you need to make tailored clothing, and sometimes I think I would like to try my hand at those.
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •Canvas has been ridiculously hard to find elsewhere.
Elena ``of Valhalla'' likes this.
Mx Amber Alex
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Mx Amber Alex • •@Amber Alex @Sini Tuulia I guess that they are related to the plastic whales they get synthetic whalebone from :D
(ok, this only works in Italian, where the difference between “stecche (di balena sintetica)” (whalebone from synthetic whale) and “(stecche di balena) sintetiche” (synthetic whalebone) is really small.)
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •The word was of course read out loud not like genuine, but genuiini 😂 They thought it might be some small antelope.
Elena ``of Valhalla'' likes this.
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Sini Tuulia • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Sini Tuulia • •@Sini Tuulia @Amber Alex yeah, *were*
I don't want to deal with our post delivering things that require an import tax (surprise amount you only discover when the postman arrives, cash only, exact change (but they are happy to let you pay more), and of course it's not a nice round number)
(I suspect that those are not the rules, just what happens in practice)
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •Elena ``of Valhalla'' likes this.