Thursday, January 28, 2016

Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics: Store Review

All the wool!!! That green is hard to photograph!

Since leaving Los Angeles and my go-to mecca, The Fabric Store, my mission has been finding a suitable Bay Area replacement. So in the search for a new textile haven, this weekend I dropped the man off at Cal and headed over to Stonemountain & Daughter just down the road.

The store is fairly small, but that's Berkeley. The front part is mainly quilting, some shirting, and a few novelties. Its also fairly packed with notions, but because the store is so small the notion area has a little bit of a lot of stuff. For example, the Aurafil stand has super picked over and was replenished with some non-Aurafil threads. For a store dedicating a large portion of its space to quilting, I didn't see much cotton thread. The second part of the store is fashion fabrics, cottons, rayons, wools, silks, linens, and a significant amount of polys (yup, I'm a textile snob, even high quality polys that I have used sew and wear disappointingly). There's a good mix of knits and wovens as well. Each shelf is well labeled and the fabrics are easy access, no bolts on top of other bolts, no digging!

The service was, I'd say, average. There were some really nice women working there and some prickly types. One of the nicer ladies cut out my fabric for me and we chatted about sewing and what I was going to make. She was very patient with me when my phone wouldn't refresh and I couldn't access the yardages I needed. Earlier she was working with another customer and answering the customer's every question, she was super knowledgeable! Prices were high compared to The Fabric Store, but the quality of the fabrics I was going for were good and the bay area ain't cheap.

And just because I care about how easy it is to get to places, the parking situation isn't great. Everything out front was full, but I was able to find parking relatively closely in a residential area. The store is towards the end of a Berkeley main road.

I'll go back because I prefer shopping for fabrics in person and not online, but I still want to try out Britex. For quilting though, Stonemountain & Daughters has some beautifully curated stuff. My haul this time was all wool, a merino and nylon blend jersey for a dress and a wool crepe for a sleeveless blazer. I also got a Thread Theory pattern and some lovely buttons. Now, excuse me while I convert my entire wardrobe to merino.

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