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!