Market Research: Fabric-a-Brac Redux

It seems to be the season for funky craft markets. Over the last couple of months I've managed to stumble across three different market events selling a variety of crafty supplies and handmade items, and they've resulted in quite a few successful shopping trips. 

Small Shopping Sprees

I've never been into online shopping. I'm happy to buy things like concert tickets, but in general I'm pretty fussy so I don't like purchasing things unless I can see or feel them first. It's something I'm definitely trying to get over though. I want to get more involved in the general crafty community and support other people who make handmade things, and a lot of it seems to be online.

A while ago I came across an Australian site called Madeit through an unexpected source. Canteen are an amazing organisation that provide relief opportunities for kids living with cancer (go check them out and support them if you can). Their main fundraising event every year is Bandana Day, when they get volunteers to sell bandanas on the street for them. I've bought one every year since late high school, and my stash currently looks like this:

Two years ago I volunteered to be a seller. In the information package they sent me there was a flyer for Madeit and a suggestion to sew some bandanas into something and sell it. It seems that, like me, a lot of their sellers have a bandana overload!

I never did buy anything off Madeit, but their sister shop Craftumi is excellent. Craftumi sells supplies, and I can't find anything bad to say about it. Since it's local, orders ship really quickly, and a lot of the shops let you do direct bank deposits. Also, since it follows the model of having individual shops with vendors you deal with directly, communication about the status of your order is really good. A few fabrics from the Oli-store are from there: the Owls and the Deer came from Fabric Pixie, while HedgeHog Meadow came from DesignerFabricInOz.

I made a purchase more recently from Spoonflower, who I'd heard about a year ago from one of my friends. Spoonflower's an awesome idea - designers and artists can upload images that get printed as fabric. There's a huge number of designs on the site, and when I first visited a year ago I'd already found a lovely ladybug pattern I fell in love with.

I'd never gotten around to buying it mainly because the prices just seem to high. But late last November, I found out that they were having a two for one sale on fat quarters and I went nuts. I ended up buying the ladybugs along with 5 other lots of material from various shops. My favourite is (rather predictably) an elephant pattern. I made a pouch out of the ladybugs but haven't had a chance to make anything with the elephants yet - what should I make?

Elephant March by Endemic

The prime candidate for a shopping spree of this sort seems to be Etsy, but I just haven't managed to find that many things that I've fallen in love with yet. When I finally did make a purchase a couple of months ago it was only for some zippers for my pouches - not particularly exciting. I have had my eye on a particularly pretty nightgown for a while, but Steph got me one for my birthday so I'll have to have a think.

Bon Bon sleepwear by Sandmaiden

Where do you like to shop? Do you know any good handmade shops that sell online? Any recommendations would be awesome :)

Fabric-A-Brac

About a month ago, one of my lovely friends sent me a link to a rather irresistible event. As anyone even remotely crafty will tell you, having a drawer/box/wardrobe/bedroom's worth of material built up is a pretty common problem. Enter the Fabric-a-Brac! Essentially a market for material stashes, it looked like a decent opportunity for sellers to offload some old supplies and for buyers to grab a bargain.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much and I already had a lot planned for the day, so I figured I'd just pop in for half an hour. My expectations seemed to be reinforced by the plastic flags and coloured paper flowers adorning the entrance to the building. But when I actually arrived, all of that was rather pleasantly blown the window.

Photo by Angus Forbes

The suite it was held in was both big and packed. There were tables and tables full of fabric and accessories, and wherever there wasn't a table, there was a person. A lot of the people were about my age too, which was reassuring. It was actually somewhat intimidating! As I may have mentioned before, I'm more of a knitter than a seamstress, so all the fabric sent my head into a spin.

Luckily one of the first tables I found was full of wool, so I managed to calm down a bit with something familiar. If you haven't noticed yet, my favourite colour is purple. I've told and told and told myself that I won't buy any more purple clothes or wool, but I just couldn't help myself. There were balls of a maroon cashmere/silk blend for $4 a pop. Usually something like that would cost about $12 at my local wool store, so I went ahead and snapped it up. I have a vague idea to make a little lacy bolero with it, but I have to try and find a pattern for one!

Photo by Angus Forbes

Having armed myself with some wool, I decided to take on the fabric. Most of the fabric shopping I've done previously has been based on whatever brightly coloured print catches my eye, and I don't have much of a handle on what to look for when it comes to different fabric compositions - although I do know that somewhat thickish, quilting-weight cotton makes for nice pouches. Narrowing in on something good when you're faced with this much unfamiliar product is hard though!


After circling around the whole studio once or twice and still having no idea, I fell back to my normal shopping method. Usually when I want to buy something I'll find something I like, walk out of the store, and if it's still on my mind about it an hour later I figure I actually do like it and I'll go back and buy it. Yes, I am somewhat indecisive. After two goes around the studio, the only thing that I was still thinking about was a small strip of thick textured cotton in a nice retro bluish print. I couldn't remember exactly where it was, so I went round again until I found it. Strangely enough the stall owner had no idea how much to sell it to me for so we just came to some mutual agreement on pricing - I don't even remember how much it was now! The material will be up in the Oli-store soon if you'd like a pouch made out of it.

The last stop was a table that I had spotted that was selling patterns. I've never sewn up a piece of clothing before, and to be honest sewing patterns scare me. But I've been wanting to try it for a while. I really want to make myself a skirt out of some sort of spotty black and white material that's a decent length - mid-length skirts are a surprisingly difficult thing to find in shops at the moment! I started rummaging through the pattern box and lo and behold, there was a nice skirt pattern. Even better, both the packaging and the store owner told me that it was an easy one to follow, so I added it to the shopping bag. The owner also told me that the pattern would look nice with some sort of lace or trimming on it, and I should go find myself some.

Luckily in my confused wandering around the studio I'd spotted a trimmings stall. I managed to score myself some black lace which would go nicely with any spotty black and white skirt material.

I really wanted to go find myself some material for the skirt, but by this point my 30 minutes was up. I left the studio very very reluctantly, but with a bag full of goodies. Hopefully it'll be on again sometime soon, and I can find a friend to go with who knows what they're looking for so I'm not completely lost!