Fabric Shopping (and Food Eating) in Paris: Happy Accidents

We were in Paris for five days in early April, where my husband had to work and I could be a tourist. We came back two days before the Notre Dame fire, which I reflected on here. I also visited the St. Ouen flea market, chronicled here. 

I made no plans to visit fabric stores - with so little time, I figured I'd have to focus on major tourist sites. Plus, I already have waaaay too much fabric at home. 

But that's not how it worked out. 

The first place I accidentally found fabric was in the department store Le BHV/Marais. The funky Marais district of Paris is famous for its Jewish history, dating back to the 13th century. It's also packed with boutiques, galleries, restaurants, bars, and, especially, falafel stands. The lines are long and slow, but it's worth it, a luscious pack with gobs of mix-ins (I don't even know what all this stuff was, but it was delicious.)

We wandered into BHV looking for something else entirely (food souvenirs, to tell the truth), but instead, on an upper floor, we came across a huge area devoted to crafts and sewing! There were two shelves of bolts:

Some had "Frou Frou" printed on them, which meant nothing to me at the time (but soon would). Many resembled Liberty of London prints, but weren't.

There was a table full of what I later confirmed to be fat-quarters. (Fat-quarters of an American yard, even though France uses the metric system and meters are 39".)

I needed an easy-to-pack souvenir, right? So I bought these.  

Nearby the fabric shelves, there was plentiful stationary, plus this rack of decorative paper. 

(Paris in general has lots of paper stores - this is clearly a country that appreciates fiber more than we do, except in bread.)

There were also shelves of yarn, especially from the French company Phildar, including these made from recycled tee shirt fabric....

...and more conventional yarns, non-fuzzy....

...and fuzzy.

We saw craft supplies of every description, for kids and adults. I shoulda bought one of these sweet paper mache stegosauruses, to paint or decoupage...

So much fun! I thought that was it - that one visit to a retail fabric establishment would be all I'd experience.

But no! A few days later, completely by accident, on the way to  Montmartre's Sacre Couer church, we found ourselves on Marche St. Pierre, the closest thing to a fabric district that Paris has, according to this excellent and informative article that I wish I had  studied before my trip!  

It was the afternoon before our departure, so I had limited time there. I sped through, and here's what I saw:

In a wonderfully named shop, "La Folie Des Tissus" ("The madness of fabric!?") from the precut ("coupons") table, I bought a three meter piece of this -12 Euros!

The shop specializes in garment fabric - their website is here. 

I was looking for fabrics that I wouldn't find in most US stores. Many stores had a kind of gauzy fabric with simple prints, which I liked enough to photograph, but not enough to buy. Like these bicyclettes:

And boxers:

...with bugs and bunnies on bottom. Similarly, I found the following simple but unusual prints, on a heavier cotton backing:

There were also plenty of prints with more colors, but not nearly as good quality as you'll find in a US quilting shop:

The lower-quality fabric was also inexpensive....

Several stores sold gorgeous, great quality, African wax fabrics, at very reasonable prices:

Then there was the following print - not high-quality, but highly entertaining - of macarons alternating with bears bathing in turquoise tea cups!?!

At the end of the block, I was surprised to find the Frou Frou shop! Now I understood where the fabric and kits at Le BHV/La Marais had come from! It had lots more than the department store, including these wool packets for embroidery (I assume)...

...a MUCH larger table of fat quarters than BHV...

...More of this nice gold-imprinted feather fabric of which I'd bought a piece of at BHV...

...a vast wall of buttons...

...another one of decals....

...And delightful kits for bags and backpacks.

I bought a couple more fat quarters. (OK, more than a couple.)

The first fabric on the left above is faux cutting board fabric! 

The last store in the street is Tissues Reine, Queen Fabrics. They had three tables of genuine Liberty of London fabrics - traditional prints as well as newer motifs. They were priced around 26 Euros a meter, which is around the same price you'll find them online in the US, around $30 a yard. (Plus shipping).

More Liberties:

The dupioni price looked great - 4.90 Euros! 

There were some very nice high quality cotton prints:

Extra-wide batiks: 

Many of the tables held mannequins - each about 3 feet tall - taller than a Barbie, but not nearly as tall as shop mannequins in the US, which gave them a hobbit-like air. 

This was the strangest fabric I found, severed hands + monkey vampires....

Moving from the ridiculous to the sublime, I also found this metallic fabric:

The selvage said it was a Kaufman fabric, from the Klimt collection, so I figured I could buy it in the US for less. As it turned out, it took me a LOT of Internet searching to find one piece, which I ultimately did buy - for about the same as I would have paid in France! (Lesson: Support shops, buy it when you see it.)

Even the floor in this shop was fabulous (Always examine French floors).

After burning thousands of calories fabric shopping (and walking around the spectacular Sacre Coeur basilica), based on our non-scientific study of one dining establishment, I suggest you eat dinner here: 

Yes, it's called Il Ristorante (reviews here), and the cuisine is Italian. The prices were reasonable, but it has an elegant feel. The charming owner wore jeans and an embellished army jacket, so I didn't worry about the fact that we weren't dressed up. The wine she recommended was delicious, and so was the food. Here's the perfectly grilled vegetable appetizer, with ultra thin-sliced carrots, zucchini and eggplant.

 I ordered the gorgonzola gnocchi, which was insanely delicious....

 DH went for the tasty clam linguini,

And this was desert. Trigger alert: It may have contained chocolate. 

The final piece of fabric I brought home from France was a dishtowel with a subway map - widely available at any souvenir shop!

Along with fabric stores and paper stores, the other thing that's much easier to find in Paris than American cities is bookstores. We passed loads of them. Some were ubiquitous Gibert Jeunes, easy to find by their yellow awnings. One that we visited had several shelves of sewing, knitting, and crochet books, plus kits:

So when you go to Paris, be sure to check out the craft section of the bookstores! For a much more comprehensive article about fabric shopping in Paris - especially if you're planning a visit - I again highly recommend this article.

I Went to Hawaii and Broke My Fabric Diet

If you've always wanted to go on a family vacation, but separation from your fabric stash gives you hives, here's the solution: Kauai!

The scenery is supernatural - azure waves, meandering rivers, lush jungles, gravitationally-obedient waterfalls - but best of all, this Hawaiian island has three of the most spectacular fabric stores I've ever seen: Vicky's Fabrics, Discount Fabric Warehouse, and Kapaia Stitchery. Their offerings were so tantalizing that I broke my years-long fabric diet (not buying new fabric except in the frequent case of psychological emergency) and gobbled up a yard or three.

You'd think that fabric prices would be higher in Hawaii, and you'd be right. Quality quilting fabric that's about $10-$12 a yard in LA is about $12-$13 a yard in Kauai. But even at $13, it's about the same price and lower in calories than the 11-ounce bags of tourist macadamia nuts.

All three of these shops have beautifully curated collections. The employees were beyond helpful - I had deep. meaningful conversations with them. What a joy!

I visited Vicky's Fabrics in Kapaa on our first day. It looks small, but they stack and pack a lot inside. Half the store is quilting-potential fabrics - batiks, solids, orientals, etc.  I couldn't resist a yard of this regal print:

I needed it! My 16-year-old might get married some day!! There are also abundant tropical prints (more than this picture shows)....

Down in the front, you can see bolts from Robert Kaufman's Indigo line. I'd never seen this fabric line in my own LQS, and I was thunderstruck! So I bought a yard of this:

Vicky's also had dupioni silk that's just about the same price as in LA's fabric district, at about $20 a yard. They had one especially deep blue/green dupioni that I didn't buy, but which got stuck in my head. 

For the next five days, we didn't visit any fabric stores, but I was thinking about color. It's overwhelming trying to parse them all. Especially blues. Here's that dupioni's slate blue, in the volcanic rocks, plus turquoise galore.......dark azure...

...dark to silvery/touched by angels...

...greens and blues...

The day before our departure I tricked the family into taking me to the remaining two fabric stores, close to each other in Lihue. First, Discount Fabric Warehouse. What it lacks in atmosphere, it makes up in price and selection. I came across a bin with 54" wide rolls of Japanese-manga-inspired fabrics, on sale from a mere $7 to an even more mere $3.50 a yard!

It's not highest quality fabric - it's kind of thin - but it's awesome and geeky and Harajuku and 54" wide!! And did I mention it was 4 bucks a yard?

(When I handed the clerk my credit card, she got excited and asked me if I'm related to David Perlmutter of "Grain Brain" fame, Not that I know of, I told her, but I hope I might inherit some of the millions he's made with his depressing-yet-iffy killer bread hypothesis. That led her to mention his views on C-diff., the hospital-borne infection related to antibiotics wiping out good gut flora. There's a new development in C.diff. treatment - fecal donation - the clerk raised it first, not me - and she said it was not an idea she could never bear. I said I bet she could if it might save the life of a loved one - then I shared that my father died from a C.diff. infection two years ago, and no doctor mentioned the donation possibility - I would have gladly shared whatever substance I could possibly extrude if it might have saved his life. It was a lovely conversation, really!)

My final stop was  Kapaia Stitchery in Lihue.

If Disneyland created a Hawaian stitching store, it would look like this. Jam-packed with gorgeous fabrics, products made from those fabrics, and COLOR

If you forget to bring a hand project on your vacation, they sell carry-along Hawaiian applique pillow kits to keep you happy stitching on the beach while your family is swimming, sunning, snorkling, surfing, and stand-up paddling.

By the counter, they were selling precuts of their signature batik fabrics for a mere $10.99/yard  - mainland prices! - How could I resist these ferns?

And customs won't let you out of Hawaii without a sea turtle batik:

On our last day, we happened to stop for coffee near Vicky's, so I ran in one more time, to buy  a quarter-yard of the deep blue dupioni above that I'd been coveting, gold dupioni to keep it company, and one more piece from the Indigo collection:

(With the clerk - the same lovely and hard-working young woman who had served me six days earlier - I wound up in a conversation about physical disabilities, scars, and weight issues, and thoughtless comments people make about these challenges. It was a conversation that moved me greatly - I left the shop with a bag of fabric and a treasure in gratitude for meeting her in particular, and the luxury of a Hawaiian shopping vacation in general.)

We also stumbled across two yarn stores, where multi-hued Hawaiian-dyed yarn sells for around $29/skein. Twisted Turtles Yarn Shop in Lihue, has a wide selection of mainland as well as Hawaiian yarns. Hanalei Strings is a unlikely combination ukulele/yarn shop, carrying mostly the gorgeous Hawaii-dyed skeins. While my DD and DH browsed a spectrum of brightly-colored ukuleles,

I browsed yarn like this,

Something for everyone!
In conclusion, some of the colors in Hawaii aren't blue or green. There's also a ton of purple, and tropical flower colors, and the complicated sunset presentation.

Plus, the famous Hawaiian dirt color:

There's an entire industry of tourist shirts dyed with the earth. 

Chickens are ubiquitous, so add more ocher, and coxcomb colors to the mix: 

More Kauai tips: Try the beet salad at Tiki Iniki in Princeville. Colorful and insanely delicious. And your bill comes like this:

 The Na'apali Coast tour is totally worth it. Keep close track of your prescription glasses when you go in the water - I think the chickens on Anini Beach stole mine. (Reward for return!)