SEWERS!! Please tell me your best websites for dress fabrics

[FloralsOrFlorals]

I’ve got a basic sewing pattern and I’m going to have a go at my first ever dress <eeeek!>. Now I just need to decide on fabric but I don’t know where the best places are to look. Please give me your top tips on where to find dress fabrics (preferably not too expensive as this is my first big project so may not go perfectly😉). Thanks!

Minerva
fabworks
croftmill
sherwoods

order a sample first if you can

Fabrics Galore

Thanks very much - good idea with the samples - you can never be sure the photo colours are exact.

I find the samples are more important for assessing the weight and drape of the fabric. When I first started sewing I made orders several times only to find that the fabric was unsuitable for the pattern once I received it. Most fabric shops will not refund cut fabric.

@FloralsOrFlorals
No answer for your question but I just came on to say I thought your thread was about the underground drains !

Croft Mills - their prices and quality are pretty much the best around of the online retailers.

I'm travelling overseas at the moment, and I realise almost all my clothes I packed are made by me, and with fabric from Croft Mills. My two suits and 2 pairs of trousers, plus nice dress I have with me are all me-made from Croft Mills fabrics. I have a gorgeous linen/wool mix dark grey/charcoal woven stripe (not as garish as that sounds) I made in a Donna Karan pattern - every time I wear it, I get compliments. I have a navy blue wool with 3% lycra (very forgiving for travel bloat) trousers and jacket made from a Ralph Lauren pattern from the 80s (I have been buying Vogue designer patterns since the late 1970s when as a student I made all my clothes). My dress is in a soft wool crepe from another Vogue designer pattern.

But I also like going into fabric shops and feeling the fabric. I do it even if I'm not buying ... If you're in the north west, Abakhan is great fun - fabric by weight - but they don't necessarily do great quality - you need to know a bit about fabric to pick the good stuff there.

But you'll learn a lot about fabric buying it in real life shops - feeling it for its "hand" - basically the way a fabric falls or drapes (or doesn't) and chatting to the owners/buyers. I have lovely chats with some shop keepers if we talk and I realise they know about & love fabric, like me.

If I were home, I'd say come & choose from my stash - it's probably got more stock than some of the new dinky sewing shops that have sprung up on the back of the Great British Sewing Bee !

Meant to say - Croft Mills is better for quality/price than Fabworks or Minerva. But Minerva will often have really high end fabrics - eg Chanel-like tweeds. Fabrics Galore is a bit cheap & nasty in my experience - a lot of polycottons and fabrics for dance costumes.

BUT I tend to take the view that if I'm spending my time sewing something, I want pure cotton, or linen or wool, not polyester, except maybe for linings (I like viscose for linings better).

Thanks @YellowAsteroid!
Yes I’d love to find somewhere I could actually go and see and feel lots of fabrics. I’m not a million miles from London so I occasionally go to Liberty just to mill around and soak up the gorgeousness in their fabric department. A bit pricey for me though!

OP, where did you get your dress pattern from?

I buy all my fabrics second hand

There is facebook market place and ebay plus charity shops

I buy duvets and curtains and fabric people are destashing

It's great for the environment and I love finding gems like 100% silk or linen

@FloralsOrFlorals if you can it's get to London easily I highly recommend a trip to Goldhawk Road (on the Hammersmith & City line. It's a whole street (both sides) of fabric shops. Every type of fabric you ever thought possible at every price point.

Here for the info although I also thought this was a thread about drainage systems. Is there no unique word for people who sew?

Pound fabrics have a great range (not priced at £1 it's just the name) plenty of pure cotton as well as synthetic fabrics. I can't wear wool but the cotton and linen are great. Some of the cheaper fabrics are great if you're starting out and don't want to make an expensive mistake, also good for trying a complicated pattern you haven't used before. I make all my own clothes and buy a lot from there

Fabric godmother is the best I've found. Follow on instagram for videos - they show the fabrics and you can see the drape of it. It is not the cheapest but of all the stuff I've made it turns out the best and I wear it more. Happy sewing!

So did I. You should probably have said "sewing people" or something like that. The sewer is definitely the drain for foul water and toilets.

The word used to be "seamstress" (my grandmother used to be one for a high end tailor). That might be considered sexist now though.

I think if you are just starting out you should use someone like Poundfabrics. They are excellent with lots of choice and excellent customer service. They are not expensive and you will want to practice without breaking the bank.

Save the more expensive like Croft Mills until you are more confident and had some practice.

Visit your local charity shops for haberdashery. You will often find fabric to use for toiles and practice garments.

Americans use the term “sewist” but I think it’s a bit twee.

I get what people are saying about using cheap fabrics to learn on, but I find the problem with using, say poly cotton instead of cotton, is that you can’t press it properly or really work it so that you can do those small details which give it the well-finished look, rather than the home-made look.

if I’m using a new pattern or an expensive fabric, I’ll make it up in sheeting or calico as a toile. Or even a cheaper but still nice fabric as a wearable toile.

A lot of US sewing sites and influencers (god help us there are sewing influencers) call a toile a “muslin”.

I like amothreads excellent quality hood prices and all deadstock.

Oh yes, AmoThreads! @excanuk and also Fabrics at Play. They keep tempting me with emails of luscious fabrics. But not cheap, especially with postage & duty added in (damn Brexit).

I'd second Goldhawk Road.

I also like Dalston Mill Fabrics - it's off Dalston Market sdo it's fun wandering through the market - just opposite Dalston train station on the London Overground line.

Only thing about the shop is there's so so much there that it's a bit hard to browse. And some staff (the men) are a bit grumpy & transactional. But I have several lengths of 100% linen from there, and the dresses I've made from them always get compliments - the pure linen is around £13 -14 per metre (a bargain!) and gets lovely & soft as you wash it, but irons up as only linen does. I had a good browse around the room of wools at the back - great stuff there too.

Also there are a couple of fabric shops clinging on in Berwick Street in Soho. Sadly, they are disappearing from there. The Cloth House is a good place to browse, and their prices are over a reasonable range. Borovicks is fabulous - I got 100% wool crepe from there years ago for a song - it was deadstock from Jean Muir's factory - it's beautiful! There are a couple of other shops as well, but they are all a bit showy & pricey - silks and bridal fabrics I would just never buy (and I buy almost everything!)

And if you're ever in Paris ... there is a street of fabric shops (almost warehouses) in Montmartre, in sight of Sacre Coeur - beautiful beautiful silks and wools.

@Topseyt123
I was thinking dressmaker might be acceptable but that infers only those who make dresses.

Yes, I agree it might be acceptable, but as you say, not all of them make dresses.

My Grandma worked for a bespoke tailor, so mainly made shirts, suits and ties for a living. She absolutely could make dresses and often did if her own daughter (my aunt) required it. She was a very clever and admirable woman who made most of her own family's clothes (she had two boys and a girl). She wasn't well off, but they were very well dressed and wanted for nothing because she could and did make it.

So I'm still no further forward on what they should be called. I've always tended to refer to her as a seamstress, through habit.

Sewing Bees? After the TV program? 😃

Well I’m a crocheter and we get called hookers so I don’t think sewers was the worst!

Thanks so much for all the recommendations. I’m going to have fun browsing all these websites and a trip to London seems in order too 😁

Seamstress is what I would go for to describe a woman who sews- men could always use a standard male suffix if they need to - ‘seamster’?
And is ‘Tailor’ a unisex term and does it only imply that the craftsperson is making suiting?

I used to love looking at fabric although I can’t make things myself. I still mourn the loss of those proper haberdashery departments they used to have at John Lewis and the other city centre department stores.

Sewing Bees? After the TV program?

Yuk no. Most of the people on that programme have very low levels of proper sewing skills.

Sew Me Sunshine is good, as is Hey Sew Sister.

Rainbow Fabrics Kilburn have a baffling array of fabric but it can be hit and miss with quality.

Knighton Fabric I've just discovered and they are very reasonable and good quality.