Seattle Fabric Shop Roundup (Summer 2014)

Have you ever traveled (or moved) to a new city and wanted to check out the area fabric stores, but from the Yelp reviews or googling "City_Name fabric stores", couldn't easily determine which stores were still open and if they'd carry fabrics that would interest you? I know that I felt this way when I first moved to Seattle a year ago. I kept hoping that I'd run across a blog post or something similar to give me a 10,000 foot view of what fabric stores were in the area, but never did. On my own, over the past year, I've been chipping away at my list of "to-visit" shops and taking notes on what they carried.

Portland might (somewhat rightly) get all of the love for being a fabric mecca, but it turns out that Seattle has a very nice handful of independent fabric stores. The shops are all a bit spread out, but you shouldn't have any trouble hitting 3-4 of these in an afternoon if you have a car and half a day to kill here.

Note that this post focuses on stores that carry at least a fair amount of apparel fabrics and focuses on stores within the city of Seattle. Disclaimer: The hours I list are the hours posted on these stores' websites and are subject to change.

Here are the stores that I've visited (in alphabetical order)

District Fabric

 

District Fabric in Fremont

Website: http://districtfabric.com/

Address: 513 N 36th St #A, Seattle, WA 98103

Phone: 206-629-879

Hours: Monday-Saturday 11am-6pm
Neighborhood: Fremont

Parking: Street (Minimal free parking; spend $1-$2 and park in a metered spot)

District Fabric shop interior

District Fabric is lovely fabric boutique located in Seattle's trendy Fremont neighborhood. Most of their fabrics are natural fibers (cottons, silks) with some knits and rayons, as well. When I visited, a fair amount of their fabric had been imported from France. 

Digital panel silks

Galaxy-print knit

Fabric quality and prices are similar to Emma One Sock, but they do have some nice, lower-priced fabrics available (particularly in their cottons).  In addition to really nice fabrics, District also carries patterns from indie faves like Colette and Deer & Doe, which is totally in line with the shop's aesthetic:

Flipping through patterns like flipping through 10" singles

I love how the patterns are packaged individually in cellophane, which brings back memories of my teenage years spent hanging out in indie record stores hunting for Smiths singles imported from the UK.

District's customer service is super-friendly. You probably wouldn't want to go here with a very specific fabric in mind, but if you go in thinking, "I want to make a pretty blouse or dress," I can pretty much guarantee that you'll find something to make you happy.

Drygood Design 

Drygood Design & Sewing Studio in Ballard

Website: http://drygoodsdesignonline.com/

Address: 5308 Ballard Avenue NW, Studio 1, Seattle, WA 98107

Phone: 206-535-6950

Hours: Monday-Saturday 11am-6pm, Sunday 10am-4pm
Neighborhood: Ballard

Parking: Street (Busy neighborhood with lots of shops, restaurants, and parking spot turnover)

Sewaholic patterns at Drygood Design

 Drygood Design is a tiny fabric boutique that is definitely worth checking out. Everything in this shop was personally curated by the owner and staff. Similar to District Fabric in that both stores' stocks emphasize natural fibers, Drygood Design also carries a small amount of fun, high-quality quilting cottons that are appropriate for girls' clothes. (My recent purchase here was a pattern and fabric for a romper for my daughter.) I had trouble finding the store on my visit; you actually enter the store through the Anchored Ship Coffee Bar, which has the more prominent storefront.

In addition to their lovely fabrics, Drygood Design also carries a wide array of indie sewing patterns and sewing books.

Japanese pattern books at Drygood Design

 When I visited earlier this week, they were running one of their kids' sewing camps; they have a sewing studio in the back part of their store place where they hold classes. Several of the young students were picking out fabric while I was in there. (As the parent of a daughter, who's already draping herself in fabric and enjoys looking at patterns, I get a little overly excited by things like "sewing camps.")

Drygood Sewing Studio

As with District Fabric, your best bet is to go in here not looking for something specific, but to go in looking for pretty dress or blouse fabric for yourself or for something fun for a little girl in your life.

Nancy's Sewing Basket

Nancy's Sewing Basket in Queen Ann

Website: http://www.nancyssewingbasket.com/

Address: 2221 Queen Anne Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109
Phone: 206-282-9112

Hours: Monday-Saturday 9:30am-6pm (-8pm on Thursday), Sunday 12:30am-5pm
Neighborhood: Queen Anne

Parking: Street (Busy neighborhood with lots of shops, restaurants, and parking spot turnover)

Nancy's Sewing Basket

I know that Nancy's is considered an institution amongst Seattle sewists, and now having been there, I understand why. Unlike District Fabric and Drygood Design, you can come into Nancy's with an idea for a project and probably find the fabric that you want there. The store is large and carries high-ish end fabrics of all kinds. I finally found chambray there that I felt had enough body and drape to make a shirtwaist dress (something that has been on my project wishlist there for a while).

Nancy's Sewing Basket sample garments

Nancy's also carries a good variety of indie sewing patterns and BurdaStyle magazines. As with District and Drygood, customer service was extremely helpful and friendly at Nancy's. If you're into ribbons and trims, they have an entire "ribbon room" at the back of the store. Also, if you sew for children or are just looking for some fun cotton prints, Nancy's carries a nice selection of Japanese cotton prints.

One interesting fabric that I found was a woven version of the knit (from EmmaOneSock) that I used for my HP Weekender Daytona Hoodie:

 

Hey, I recognize this print!

If you're looking for garment fabric and can only visit one fabric store in Seattle, I'd recommend going with Nancy's. (However, really try to squeeze in a trip to District and Drygood, if you can!)

Pacific Fabrics (Northgate location)

Pacific Fabrics in Northgate

Website: http://www.pacificfabrics.com/

Address: 838 NE Northgate Way, Seattle WA 98125

Phone: 206-362-0111

Hours: Monday-Friday 9am-9pm, Saturday 9am-7pm, Sunday 10am-6pm
Neighborhood: Northgate

Parking: Lot with plentiful parking (in a strip mall)

I think I take Pacific Fabrics for granted. It's on my way home from work; I've visited the store far more times than any of the other stores on this list. In fact, even though I was planning this blog post, I forgot to take pictures the last time that I was in the store, so that's why there aren't any for this store entry.

Whereas Nancy's, District, and Drygood Design tend to carry a bit more high-end fabrics and be a little pricier (but worth it, IMO), Pacific Fabrics is more mid-range. About a third of their fabric inventory is apparel fabric, another third is quilting cottons (think Michael Miller and various licensed fabrics), and a final third is home decor. The whole back part of the store is notions and books. Pacific Fabrics also has a really impressive selection of trims. They even carry non-Wrights pre-made bias tape here.

Pacific Fabrics has several locations throughout the Seattle metro area; however, I've only been to the Northgate location. (The Sodo location is supposed to be fun to visit.) If you can only visit one fabric store in Seattle and frequently sew things other than adult garments, Pacific Fabrics is probably your best choice.

Seattle Fabrics

Seattle Fabrics

 

Website: http://www.seattlefabrics.com/

Address: 8702 Aurora Ave N, Seattle, WA 98103
Phone: 206-525-0670

Hours: Monday-Saturday 9am-6pm
Neighborhood: West of Northgate (Northwest Seattle)

Parking: Small store lot

Seattle Fabrics specializes in outdoors and, to a lesser extent, active wear fabrics. These technical fabrics (and the accompanying buckles, zippers, ribbing, etc) are the only things that they carry. If you're planning an outdoors wear project, this store is a must-visit. (Note that Nancy's Sewing Basket carries fashion rainwear fabrics for garments like trenchcoats.) If you do not have an outdoors wear project planned, you can probably skip Seattle Fabrics, unless you want to gawk and the 25 different colors of polartec fleece available.

Stitches

Stitches in Capitol Hill

Website: http://stitchesseattle.com/

Address: 711 East Pike Street, Seattle, WA 98122
Phone: 206-709-0707

Hours: Daily 11am-7pm
Neighborhood: Capitol Hill

Parking: Street, metered (Parking in this neighborhood is a total pain, but this shop is a short bus ride from downtown Seattle)

Stitches interior

Stitches is a cute sewing and knitting store in a neighborhood where parking is a nightmare. If you're staying downtown, you're probably better off taking the short bus ride up to Capitol Hill than trying to find parking near Stitches (unless there's some lot/parking option that I'm not aware of). Stitches carries a fairly eclectic mix of fabric, yarn, and embellishment supplies. 

Like Nancy's, Stitches carries Japanese cotton prints. They also have a small handful of fun quilting cottons along with their mostly-apparel fabrics. I got a kick out of this "Seattle" print:

Seattle print fabric at Stitches

I also got a kick out of this nautical shirting, which I know that some of us (myself included) recently purchased from FabricMart. 

Nautical-themed shirting

Unlike the other more...sedate stores on this list, Stitches is where you'd want to go if you need to buy neon pink fake fur for something. However, they did have plenty of "normal" fabrics for garments and other projects, too. Prices here were a bit more moderate than compared to some of the other stores listed here, too. 

So, that pretty much wraps up this summary of Seattle fabric stores.  I stuck with the city of Seattle didn't cover any of the stores on the Eastside or North shore areas, but if you have a favorite store there, feel free to mention it in the comments. I'll likely do follow-up posts at some point to visit other stores in other areas or to comment on how inventory at these stores has changed. (Most of these stores clearly have summer fabrics in right now, which makes sense in July. I'll be curious to see what they carry in December.)

Seattle musings: The 12th man

I am 39 years old, and I have never lived in a city where one of the home sports teams has won a national championship. In addition to experiencing snow that I didn't purposely drive to for the first time, our Seattle move has also given me the chance of experiencing actually living in the same city as the Super Bowl-bound team that I'll be cheering for. Yes, unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the Seattle Seahawks will be playing in the Super Bowl against the Denver Broncos this Sunday.

Let me give you a brief history of my sports fandom. I've lived most of my life in San Diego. San Diego has two major sports teams: the Padres (baseball) and Chargers (football).

The Padres have historically been anywhere from terrible to mediocre, having had various horrible owners for most of their existence (I'm looking at you, Tom Werner, John Moores, Jeff Moorad's layaway ownership, etc.). Every so often, the Padres will cobble together a half-decent team, make the playoffs, and unceremoniously get bounced in the first round by the St. Louis Cardinals.

In their 45 years of history as an MLB team, the Padres have made it to the World Series exactly twice. The first time was when I was 10 years old, and the Padres beat out another "long suffering" team in the NLCS--the Chicago Cubs--to move on to the World Series. They were up against one of the better teams in baseball history--the 1984 Detroit Tigers--and only managed to win one game. As a 10-year-old living in San Diego, this was the absolutely most amazing thing to experience and cemented my fanship for many, many years.

The second time that the Padres made it to the World Series was in 1998. I had just moved from San Diego to the Bay Area for a new job, and so I wasn't actually living in town when my team was kicking ass all over the National League. I missed the debut of "Trevor Time" (Trevor Hoffman entering the field from the bullpen to AC/DC's "Hells Bells") and an awful lot of fun. My dad managed to score tickets to game 4 of the World Series, so I flew down to attend that game with him. Even though we lost that game, sealing our sweep by the Yankees (unfortunately, another historically great team that we had to face for the WS), it was still an amazing experience for me. I cried when the game was over, not just because we lost, but because I was so overwhelmed with emotion.

That's it for Padres World Series appearances. Historically, the Chargers have done much better in the standings than the Padres, but the Chargers have only made it to the Super Bowl once in their entire history. That Super Bowl appearance came after the 1994 season, when I was living in Santa Cruz to attend school at UC Santa Cruz. The Chargers faced the San Francisco 49'ers, after (you guessed it) the 49'ers had a historically great season. Santa Cruz is geographically close to San Francisco (about a two-hour drive away when the freeways aren't crippled by traffic), so I was not only not in San Diego to experience this, I was surrounded by "the enemy", since many of my fellow students were 49'er fans.

Living in Seattle while the Seahawks have gone on their Super Bowl run has been a little bit of a bittersweet experience. They are a FUN team to watch, and my husband and I have been cautiously adopting them as our "second team". The superstitious sports fan in me (made that way from years of being a San Diego sports fan) has been waiting for the other shoe to drop--I keep expecting the bottom to fall out in some way. The extremely passionate Seahawks fan base, otherwise known as the "12th man" has been relishing this experience. In fact, a 12th man flag has even been flying on top of the Space Needle for the past few weeks:

I've had a chance to observe the following around town these past few weeks:

• 12th man flags flying everywhere, including from the windows of all of the Amazon buildings
• Out-of-service city buses currently say "Go Hawks!" instead of the usual "Not in Service"
• Strangers ending conversations of small talk with a "Go Hawks!"
• Everyone everywhere wearing Seahawks and/or 12th man gear
• A panhandler with a "Go Hawks!" on his cardboard sign (after the line about being a homeless vet needing help)

Also, my husband just alerted me to the fact that this is going on right now:

I can't say that I'm not a little jealous, although that's partially because I haven't lived here long enough to really get attached to the local team. Seattle sports, like San Diego sports, have had a long history of suckitude. The Mariners have never even made it to the World Series, even despite having won 116 regular season games in 2001. The Seahawks have only made it to the Super Bowl once, in 2006, and lost. Seattle fans absolutely deserve what they're currently experiencing now, and I will be rooting hard for the Seahawks to win it all in New York in a few days. I try not to be a pessimist, but I wonder if I'll ever be able to experience the same feeling for one of my teams in my lifetime, and I seriously doubt it. I truly think that my best hope to experience this type of emotion for myself is for the Seahawks to continue to kick ass (and with great young players, they should be able to) and wait for my loyalty to my adopted city to catch up.

This has been a long and rambling post, but I've wanted to document my feelings around what I'm seeing/experiencing here somewhere.

And Go Hawks!

Yea or Nay: Inifinity scarves for the short, large-busted woman?

I never had to wear scarves when I lived in San Diego, but here in Seattle, they've pretty much been a necessity for being comfortable outside when the temperature drops below 45 degrees.

I know that the current fashion is to wear infinity scarves, which are a loop of fabric that you drape around your neck 2 or 3 times. I sewed one of these a few years ago, but never ended up wearing it much. I felt like I had a pool of fabric sitting on my Very Large Bust. Having a short neck didn't help things.

Infinity scarf (Nordstrom's)

Since moving, I've been sticking with a traditional scarf, looped once around my neck and letting the ends hang down. I might be deluding myself, but I like to think that the ends hanging down helps create vertical lines down the front of my body. In theory, this should have a lengthening effect on 5'2" me.

"Traditional" scarf (Nordstrom's)

What's your take? I'm thinking that the infinity scarf is a trend that I should just sit out, but maybe you're a full-busted woman yourself and you've found a way to style these where you don't feel like you're adding unnecessary bulk to your chest. Thoughts?

Winter is here

Because "winter is here" is so much more original than "winter is coming" at this point, right?

Self-directed snark aside, I am experiencing my first "real" winter here in Seattle. I was actually born in Chicago, but we moved to San Diego when I was four years old. Since then, I've lived my entire life in the state of California (bouncing a couple of times between San Diego and the Bay Area). You just flat-out don't see temperatures of "27" in most parts of San Diego, let alone have days with high temperatures of 36. I see an upcoming low temp of "19" degrees Fahrenheit. I don't think I've ever actually been outside in 19 degree weather. I have no idea what that feels like.

When we told people that we were going to be moving to Seattle, the general consensus was "It's so rainy up there!" said to us with a tone indicating that we might melt from a little moisture. The rain really hasn't been a big deal; when it rains, it's usually overnight or in the early morning. We do have a fair number of overcast days up here. I've been told that we're having a dry fall, so maybe I haven't experienced the "real" rain yet.

The cold, on the other hand, is much greater than I expected. I'm not complaining about it--it's like a novelty to us so far. "OMG! So this is what 27 degrees feels like!" We haven't had any snow yet, but I've been told that the community that we live in does typically get a few inches of snow per year. Up here, people aren't used to snow and apparently, all hell breaks loose when it does snow.

Things that I've learned about cold weather in the past few weeks:

• Scarves: They're not just fashion accessories!
• An unlined/denim jacket does not cut it for warmth below 45 degrees.
• I never thought I'd write this, but I really want to make a coat. A lined and interlined coat. (Yes, I have a pattern, fabric, etc.)
• If you leave your car sitting outside at a Park and Ride all day in 30-something degree weather, you'll need to sit in your car with the engine running for 10 minutes while your defroster de-ices your windows enough to actually drive home.

Also, water freezes when it's this cold! Really, like puddles and stuff. Check out this "puddle" in a parking lot that I walk through to get to my office in the mornings:

That's ice! A squirrel could ice skate on that puddle! Can you tell that this is all still hugely entertaining to us? I'm probably going to explode with excitement the first time that I see snowflakes.

Oh, to be in your late 30's and experience winter weather for the first time...