Hot in San Antonio

Well I made it down to Texas last weekend and will be here for two more weeks. I'm in San Antonio helping a friend and her family who recently welcomed baby #2, much to the chagrin of their 2 1/2 year old daughter. Essentially I am her playmate while mommy and daddy settle in with their recent addition to the family.

The only sewing I am doing while I am here is making a couple of cushions. The store where they bought their sofa wanted $100 for an extra two sofa cushions!! The cushions that came with their small loveseat wasn't even professionally finished on the inside, I couldn't believe they'd try to milk as much as $100 for more of that low-end workmanship. Fortunately my friend was able to buy about 1.25 yards of the upholstery fabric. I'm more than happy to whip something up for them, any reason to use a sewing machine while I am away from mine makes me happy!

Since I didn't bring my sewing stuff with me I have been knitting when I have a free moment. I finished the first sock for DH when I was on the road. It looks pretty good if I do say so myself. I usually am a risk taker and was going to finish the toe with the darker yarn. The skein was looking kind of small for sock #2 and I chickened out the last minute and decided to make the tip with another skein. It's nice that I know my anal retentive self well enough to ward off problems now instead of completely calling the project a bust at the very end. I'm in the midst of knitting sock #1 for the MIL before I return to the other pair for hubby. I really need to learn how to knit two socks at a time.... It has been pretty fun though. I hope he likes them!

The joys of unpacking

I've been swamped with boxes galore for the past couple of months from our move earlier this summer. The sewing room is 80% ready, but I am taking a road trip down south for a month to help a friend so I won't be able to enjoy it. In the meantime I have been focusing on my knitting. I have a lot of projects lined up for the 2011 Holiday Gifts Sew-Along on Pattern Review. That list will only continue to grow so I'm thinking of bringing my Janome Sew Mini machine with me on my trip. Hope the summer has been more productive for others out there, I'm finding myself on a roller coaster ride as far as productivity is concerned.

Back in the US and ready to go!

We are finally moving into our new townhouse next week! In the last two months Sprout and I have lived in 6 different places during the transition, it will be nice to finally settle down and get my sewing time back. 

I acquired a small sewing table off of Craigslist last week, nothing fancy but something I will use every time I sew. Our new place will have a basement and two bedrooms, I am claiming the basement as my new sewing space. The first craft project I will tackle are curtains. The walls will be painted a neutral color (possibly a light lemon yellow), and the curtains will be white. I get to finally buy some new furniture... this will be fun!

I will post all of my notebook entries for vendors at Dong Dae Mun as soon as I can get to it. I want the information out there for everybody, I spent almost two years navigating the area so you don't have to! Happy sewing!

Quick update on DDM fabric market

I received a comment from a reader about going to DDM and finding it closed. Based on the date of the comment, it sounded like she was there on a Friday. On this particular Friday I also happened to be at the fabric market so I know it wasn't closed. Maybe she got there in the evening? The Dong Dae Mun area is known for their 24/7 shopping but this excludes the fabric market. The only other day of the regular week the fabric market is closed is on Sundays (ask me how I know...). They also close earlier on Saturdays, most vendors start shutting down at 3PM.

The small parking lot to the east of the fabric complex is now under construction. The wall around this tiny area says a JW Marriott- Dong Dae Mun is being built. This will work out for me when I come to Seoul to visit in the future, but that is such a small parcel of land on which to build a hotel.

It was recently confirmed to me by a former garment industry insider that the DDM fabric complex is the largest textile market in the world. I'm so glad I've had the opportunity to get to know this place very well in the past year and a half. 

One other piece of news for fabricholics... Happy Quilt will be moving to another location in June. I will post more details to the location when I get more info. The new warehouse will be close to a subway station so hopefully it will be easier to get there using public transport than where they are now.

The last time I was at HQ I came back with a whole bolt of white linen. Yes my friends, an entire bolt. You were all wondering when this was finally going to happen, weren't you? I plan to make draperies for our new place in the US with this. It was *only* about 25 yards.... They actually ended up weighing the bolt to estimate the yardage for me. This is white linen we're talking about, if I run out of windows to cover I can always make a garment. (Wow, just move us to Europe to complete the modern day Von Trapp family picture.. minus all the kids ofcourse.)

Happy Quilt, I love you!

Nothing new or exciting are coming from my sewing corner. I need to finish the quilt top for the MIL and a couple of small projects before I pack up the machines. I've been finding myself knitting more than sewing lately. I am very much looking forward to having all of my notions, books and machines in one place when we get back to the states. By early summer I expect to have many projects to share. Hope you're all being more productive than I have been this month!

Recent projects and Korean dumpster diving with friends

My mother in law is visiting and I haven't had much time to devote to personal sewing. I did want to share a small table runner that a friend pieced and I recently finished quilting. When it is completely done it will be donated to a fund raising event on base. I'm still an amateur at the quilting process but I did see improvement from sewing the first star to the last.

The other project is a mitten that I have been working on and off on for months and struggling to finish. I'm torn between just letting it become some sort of art piece and working on its mate so I have a full pair. The yarn is a cashmere and wool blend, very soft and densely knit. This was also my first pair of adult mittens. I wanted a challenge and I got one. It wasn't very difficult to knit, just tedious.

I am so glad most my friends are free spirits at heart like me. After knitting group last week my friend C and her husband were giving me a ride home. We barely pulled out of the alley when I spotted a stack of mannequins lying in the middle of the road. I questioned aloud whether they were for trash pick up and C responded they probably were, proceeded by "did you want one?". Without hesitation we stopped the car and I rushed to the stack and grabbed not one but TWO mannequins- a male and a female. Arms were falling off as we shoved and pushed them into their small Hyundai. 

When we got back into our driveway I decided to stick them in the back of J's pick up truck for him to haul upstairs before he headed to work in the morning.

Gunther and Frida

In their former life they were models for Puma in an athletic wear store. Now they guard our apartment hallway Home Alone-style. 

J asked if I expect to ship them back to the US with the rest of our stuff in a couple of months. Truthfully, if I can't find a good sewing related use for them I will re-chuck them. But for now I consider them a part of the family.

Happy Quilt makes me HAPPY!

I've been back one full week from my SE Asia trip and today was the first opportunity for me to hit up Happy Quilt. To my *extremely* pleasant surprise I found the new Bryant Park collection from Khristian Howell in the stacks and stacks of fabric. I picked up all the prints I could find in my favorite color combination. I bought more than enough fabric for a king size quilt and some other smaller projects, I can't wait to use these fabrics! Also available were new Vera Bradley prints, my favorite is "Sittin' in a Tree".

Bryant Park collection

Sittin in a Tree

On the sewing projects front: I am going to re-focus my energy on perfecting some samples of pointed collar corners and sleeve plackets. I want to add to my portfolio and these smaller projects won't need too many sewing tools, which is a good thing because I need to start packing up for our move in May. Have I said how much I am going to miss living in Korea?

I still have one blog entry to write about my fabric shopping experience in Cambodia. Unfortunately being in Vietnam during Tet put a large damper on most of my shopping. China was kind of a big bust too but I knew the areas where I was staying were lackluster in the textile arena. I am trying to get to Shanghai/Hangzhou/Suzhou in April, I expect to be much luckier bringing silks from these areas back with me.

Fabric shopping across Manila and Singapore

The more I am traveling across Asia the more convinced I am that Dong Dae Mun is the best place for fabric shopping. I have had some nice surprises here in Singapore but prices here are astronomical! Great quality, but boy it can hurt the pocket books.

I had a couple of pleasant fabric buying surprises in the Philippines, once at a local fabric market in Batangas City and another at the Mall of Asia in Manila. Cotton Depot at MoA was a serendipitous find while wandering through looking for another shop. I picked up some cotton lawn for about $5 USD/yd. Quailty was decent and they said it was Japanese cotton. The store at MoA had a small storefront, their main location is at Glorietta 5 (3rd floor). 

Cotton Depot, Mall of Asia, Manila

There are quite a few fabric stores at the SM Megamall in Manila, as well as Glorietta 5. Many of them had fancier fabrics for formal dresses and prices were fairly reasonable. I guess there is a bigger home sewing market in the Philippines than in Korea. I never made it to the big Divisoria market, maybe next time when I find a local who knows that place well. Apparently there is a lot of petty thefts at the market, foreigners are targets.

Singapore also has had some wonderful fabric shopping areas. An online Singaporean sewing friend kindly met up with me and showed me her favorite haunts on Arab Street and Chinatown. A lot of the Italian silks were absolutely gorgeous, at $75 SGD/meter and higher, I decided to skip buying any. The money I "saved" there came in handy when I was taken to Nicole Xavier in Chinatown. WOW. Hello there, Liberty of London cotton lawns.... I was in love!

Nicole Xavier, Chinatown, Singapore

I picked up a couple of yards of a beautiful cherry blossoms print, oh how I wanted to get more. With the exchange rate and meters to yards conversion the fabric was a little more than what I am seeing from online retailers in the US, but I am so in love with my piece. I researched more on Liberty of London when I returned back to the hostel last night, really look forward to getting more of this stuff in the future.

I returned to Arab Street today and came across a sale bin where I picked up an Italian silk charmeuse end piece for $10 SGD/meter. It was pure chance and a welcome cheaper price tag. Arab street is lined with vendors of fabric, most people buy their textiles here and then take it to a tailor to have garments made. So many beautiful silk prints in this area!

Arab Street, Singapore

I still have Kuala Lumpur, Cambodia, and Vietnam to hit up in the next few weeks. I wonder what other delicious textiles await me. :)