Curb Your Appetite…

Once in awhile one of my students becomes one of my dearest friends, the kind who listens, and shares and encourages, and always knows where I am and keeps in touch, no matter how distracted I get in my crazy busy life.  Ginnie is one of those friends, she nursed me back to health in her home on the UP (Upper Peninsula of Michigan) after my conference debacle a couple of years ago. She has taken so many of my garment construction intensives at Sievers School in Wisconsin, that I think she could actually teach herself.  When Ginnie called me and told me about a NYC fabric buying trip with Peggy Sagers, reknowned sewing guru and designer of Silhouettes Patterns, and said she wanted to go for her 60th birthday and what did I think…  I looked at the dates and thought, this is a no brainer, even though I live a half hour away, and am in NYC fairly regularly, hanging out in fabric stores with a whole bus load of women who are passionate about sewing (more than one told me quilting was a bad word in their neck of the woods) seemed like an opportunity I couldn’t turn down.

And I love Peggy Sagers.  She is funny, incredibly knowledgeable, and makes terrific patterns.  I recommend them in my list of independent pattern companies, mainly because Peggy makes patterns with multiple cup sizes for women with all different size “assets”.  She has all kinds of sewing DVD’s and I understand she is currently working on a PBS sewing show.  She is also teaching at the ASG conference in Washington DC this August (I’ll be teaching there as well of course).

And so, I got off the plane from Savannah/Atlanta on Tuesday, picked up Ginnie and her best buddy Cindy from the airport on Wednesday and we had a fabulous time on Wednesday evening exploring my studio, my gardens, and we did a group cooking experience, all chopping and assembling dinner which we shared on the deck in the glorious weather, with a glass of wine, life doesn’t get any better than that.  Well that was Wednesday and the week just got better and better…

Thursday we headed into the city on a tour bus with Peggy and stopped at two stores, both fabric wholesalers, which was an amazing experience, because I can’t go to those places on my own, and the prices are pretty incredible.

Which put me in quite a dilemma.  So here is the situation.  I don’t need any more fabric.  None.  If I sewed a garment a week for the next few years, I might make a dent, but really, I have way more than I will probably use in a lifetime.  And I’m heading down to Asheville, NC in June, where I can pretty much guarantee another trip to Waechter’s Silk Shop to raid their remnant bin.  I watched women buying armloads of fabrics at the first place, Marcorp, and I had to really stop myself and step back and decide what was really important.  We had no less than six planned stops, and I really didn’t have an unlimited wallet and even if I did, there was simply no more room on the shelf for anymore fabrics.  I tried really really hard to be selective, and only look at things that just stood out from the rest of the hundreds of bolts of fabrics, and that represented fabrics that I couldn’t produce myself, and that I could see myself making into a garment, hopefully in the next couple years.  With six stops, I gave myself permission to pick out two fabrics per stop.

That said, I ended up with three at the first stop, only because once I made my selection of two, I watched all these women scooping up stacks of fabrics and as I neared the front of the line to pay, an additional cut of fabric ended up in my hands…  What could I do?

The first cut was pretty pricey especially at wholesale, but I just kept coming back to it and decided that I couldn’t live without it, and the fact that it was from the JMendel Fall 2013 collection made it all the more appealing.  This is a silk Matelassé.  It is an amazing fabric and though I haven’t a clue what I’m going to do with it, I did see what JMendel did with it, and that gives me some ideas.  They also had it in red, but I chose the gold color.

There was also a great cotton twill with spandex print that looked like snakeskin running down the length and I could see a great pair of skinny jeans out of this fabric.  The blue knit is the one that jumped in my hands while I was waiting in line.

Stop number two was A&A, also a wholesaler, and they had aisle after aisle and box after box of fabrics floor to ceiling.  I was beginning to get overwhelmed, and I just poked and wandered until this amazing mauve “rice” dyed cotton fabric probably from India waved to me from a high up shelf.  It was unlike any other fabric I saw in the place, and I pulled down the roll and asked how much it was.  Rice dyed means that little kernels of rice were poked up into each square and tie-dyed by wrapping the rice kernel with string, like Japanese Shibori.  It was gorgeous.  No one else knew what I was looking at of course, except Ginnie, and I was thrilled to get it for $15. a yard.  There was also this beautiful teal acetate jacquard on a roll stuck in a bin, and I brought that one home as well.

Day two took us first to a stop in NJ, called Stylecrest Fabrics in Hoboken.  I’d never been to Stylecrest, also a wholesaler, and there we looked at samples and placed orders and those fabrics will be shipped next week.  I had been really careful and only picked out two samples, but again, while waiting in line to write up my order, another sample just jumped into my hand and had to go home with me.  Or will eventually come home with me.  I’ll show photos of those once I get them.

The bus then headed back into NYC where we split into two groups, one group went shopping at Elliott Berman fabrics and the other went on a tour of the Nanette Lepore Design Studios.  I’ve never actually been inside a NYC fashion designer studio, and what’s amazing about Nanette Lepore, is that 80% of their collection is manufactured here in the US.  Which is an amazing feat.  We quietly funneled through the crowded work spaces, watching pattern makers, drapers, cutters, sewers, and racks and racks of samples.

Back at Elliott Berman, again, I was almost overwhelmed by the amount of fabrics, all on horizontal rolls that weighed a ton, and tried to focus on what I really wanted that I didn’t already have.  One thing I’m trying to improve in my repertoire of garment skills, is working with knits.  And they had some beautiful viscose rayon knits, one print really jumped out at me, and two other women bought some as well once we unrolled the bolt.  I had picked out a second print from a rack of samples but alas, that one seemed to be sold out.  So I only brought home one cut of fabric, which made up for the extras that found their way into my arms while I was waiting to pay in the other locations.

And then, it was on to Mood.  If you watch Project Runway you know about Mood.  I have to say that I’d been to Mood a couple times in the past, in the early days of Project Runway, and I wasn’t really impressed.  I found the fabrics to be low end, and unmarked, and the experience underwhelming so I wasn’t expecting much when I went this time.  I was really shocked at how different Mood was this time around.  Mood is a retailer, so of course anyone can shop there, and the place was packed on a Friday afternoon.  There was a slew of hard working staff members ready to help with whatever you wanted, and the selection was pretty amazing.  Two things jumped out at me almost immediately, and out of all the stops we made, I think Mood was my favorite.  And they had a huge button wall as well.

So I picked out a gorgeous teal wool sweater knit, I’m thinking a cowl neck dress for next winter, along with a beautiful unusual wool twill novelty and some really cool buttons.  And of course there was the ever present “Swatch”.

Thank you Mood!

The last stop proved to be the most expensive of course.  Peggy Sagers is pretty terrific at sewing leather.  She is offering a class at the ASG conference in tips with working with leather and also sells a DVD on the same topic.  She was wearing the jacket from this pattern envelope all day and yes, it is a gorgeous salmon colored leather and I found myself looking forward to the last stop at Leather Impact, thinking I might just buy me some lamb skins and make me a jacket.

It took me about 10 minutes to spy this gorgeous caviar leather (caviar refers to the pebbled surface of the skin) in a dark plum/brown shade.  Peggy was really helpful in guiding me to pick out three matching skins that would hopefully get me a jacket in the end.  I couldn’t be more thrilled.

I can’t recommend enough this kind of buying trip.  Peggy is funny and entertaining, the women on the bus were from all over the US and Canada and just a wealth of talent, and enthusiasm.  There were no quilt fabrics going home with this group.  These were women serious about making garments and it was so wonderful to hang with them.  I’m exhausted and my credit card is still smoking (especially after that last stop) but opportunities come this way rarely and I’m grateful Ginnie prodded me to go.  I’ll return again to Mood of course, especially now that I have a frequent buyer card…

What and when am I going to make with all these gorgeous fabrics?  Well dear readers, you will just have to stay tuned…