Where Do I Buy My Silk?

I am often asked where do I by my dupioni silk. Although Philadelphia has a fabric district, it is a mere shadow of what it used to be, so I hop on the bus and travel to the garment district of NYC. This is my shop:

It's called Butterfly Fabrics or Bazar Fabrics, located on 39th street. All the fabrics in the store are from India. Looking at all their beautiful fabrics, I wish I had a fancy event to attend because I would love a ball gown made from many of their them. This is their wall of silk dupioni:

If I won the lottery I would buy 1 yard of every single color. My favorite ones are those that are iridescent made using a different color silk thread for the warp and the weft. I was there shopping for my upcoming workshop at the Mid Appalachian Quilts education seminar.

There's construction everywhere in NY. This is outside of the shop.Lots of scaffolding.

I met my cousin who lives in Manhatten when I was done shopping. We visited the Hell's Kitchen Flea. I passed it walking to the Garment District from the bus stop and it looked irresistible. I don't know what came over me, but I couldn't resist these African masks.

And I bought one!

My cousin spoils me when we get together. She had a list of things we could do, but we ended up catching up and visiting with her dear, sweet dog. She did take me to the roof of her apartment building and what a treat that was.

And look at these views:

Empire State Building

The Chrysler Building. This is my favorite building in the city. I remember when I did a Wednesdays Wandering block about this building. You can see the post HERE.

And I love these old water cisterns.

And of course we had lunch at a wonderful deli. I had the most delicious matzah ball soup with half a summery egg salad sandwich on real rye bread - that's with carroway seeds. Yum!

 

 

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NYC Part II

Inspiration was everywhere that I turned. And yes I looked like quite the tourist with my camera and craned neck. I'll just share the photos. I could make at least one quilt from each one. How about you?

And here's an opportunity. Quiltmakers is having a giveaway for all 8 issues of their 100 Blocks Magazines. That would be a total of 800 different blocks. Now that's a lot of quilts! Here's the link.

http://www.quiltmaker.com/blogs/quiltypleasures/2013/12/its-a-guy-thing-quiltmakers-100-blocks/#comments

 

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My NYC Hotspots

I needed a New York City fix. 

The Bolt Bus is my preferred mode of transportation from Philly.
I leave the driving to them - with free WiFi!

 

It was a little eerie entering the city, the day after 9/11.

Heading into the Lincoln Tunnel, going under the Hudson River into Manhattan.

 

The first stop was my favorite silk store, Butterfly Fabrics located at 256 W 39th St.

I could take a yard of every single color.

All of their fabric is imported from India.

Next stop, Daytona Trim, which is right across the street.

They must have every color and size of ric rac that was ever made.

 There is always something new to discover.

Today it was a store that sold only zippers.

These colors are just yummy.

 

On my way to meeting my cousins for lunch, I passed a shoe store with a big SALE sign in the window. I doubled back to check it out.  They had the funkiest shoes that I have never seen before.

I came home with this great pair.  I couldn't resist.

 

 

Wednesday's Wanderings #51 - I Heart New York

I heart NY!

It was one of my best fiber trips to New York City. 

Armed with a list of places to visit, a group of us headed to Manhattan.

 One of the locations was new and other places were new to me.   We touched down at 10AM and walked our feet off until we boarded the bus at 5:00PM to head home.

Our first stop was to load up on Dupioni silk, but on our way there we walked down 38th St and what did we find?  Shops filled with trims and notions and all sorts of embellishments.

Zippers in every size and color that you could imagine.

And check out these feather boas and racks of trim.

                                                   My favorite place - Butterfly Silk

Location: 257 W 39th St.

I had trouble controlling myself.  I have not met a color of dupioni that I did not covet.

Look at these gorgeous colors! 

 luscious pinks

a bit of orange and yellow

 wonderful greens

and my favorites - blues and purples.

I do have a project idea that is marinating in my brain.  Now I can't wait to start.

Then we headed downtown to 15th Street to check out Chelsea Market.  I had never been, but have heard lots about it.  We planned on eating lunch there and so did a lot of other people.  A lot.

It's indoors with about 35 shops off of a main concourse and I had a list of shops to visit to finish my holiday shopping.   Chanukah is early this year.  It starts Saturday night.

 We were really lucky to snag a table to eat a yummy lunch to fortify ourselves.

Most of the shops had a food theme.

 Eleni's was featured on The Today Show as one of the best cookie bakeries in town.

And they had cupcakes too!

I can't show the goodies I bought as gifts, but my kids will have an inkling when I write that

Jacques Torres, master chocolatier, had the most tempting shop of all!

Chelsea Market was well worth the trip.

 Next stop was the Lion Brand Yarn Flagship store, just a few blocks away.

 The window was amazing.  Everything in that window was knitted.

 Even the birch tree.

 Marimekko is a Finnish fabric company that was started in the 1950's.  I made my first quilt from their fabrics back in the 1970's.  The fabric with bold bright designs disappeared for a while, but now is making a resurgence.  I don't remember the price I paid when I was a graduate student, but now it is a bit out of my price range.  The quilting weight fabric was $45/yd and home dec weight was $75/yd!!  We shopped with our eyes.

 The City Quilter, located on 25th St was our last stop.  It is a great quilt shop with lots of contemporary fabric. We needed one last fabric fix. We were pretty tired by the time we arrived.  I wish that one of us had worn a pedometer.  I don't know how many miles we walked, but it was a lot.  Our bags filled with what we had bought were getting pretty heavy by this point.  They let us leave them behind the counter at the register.  That rejuvenated us enough so that we could buy more fabric. Just what we needed.

Since I visited last, they opened up some space and created a gallery for art quilts.

There was an exhibit of Judy Blaydon's quilts.

On our way to catch the bus to head back to Philly, we stopped to look at Macy's holiday windows, but this display of Michael Kors' red sequin stilettos really caught my eye.

So my block for the week summarizes our adventure in NYC. 

I printed a map of Manhattan depicting our route.  I created the map with Mapquest, cropped it to focus on where we went and printed it on EQ Printables.

 After quilting it along the avenue and street lines, I added the marquees and the footprints.

 I really heart NY!

How about you?

It Was A Martha Week

Martha Stewart, that is. And I am not afraid to say that I admire her. She has elevated cooking, crafting and cleaning from a housewifey thing to something to be admired and taken seriously. Her self-promotion gets on my nerves sometimes, but you have to take the little bit of bad with the good.
On Monday, Martha was doing a book signing for her new book, "Martha Stewart's Dinner At Home". It was at a Williams Sonoma Store at the King of Prussia Mall - once the largest mall in the US. You had to purchase the book from Williams Sonoma to have the privilege of getting a ticket to stand in line to see Martha. Free mini cupcakes, baked from a recipe in her book, were available to help pass the time waiting on line. The line snaked through the mall. It was so exciting and the time passed pretty quickly. As I was debating about who to have her inscribe the book to - do I give it as a gift or do I keep it for myself? - we were told that Martha was not personalizing the book. Decision made! That was easy.
As we got closer and closer, it became more and more structured. Have the leaf flap of your book here, no photographs here, only photographs there, etc.... Considering how many people were there and that we were close to the end of the line, she was delightful.
That's me in the blue. Can you see one of her bodyguards in the background?

So if that wasn't enough Martha, Wednesday a gang of us had tickets to go to the Martha Stewart show in NYC. I had to leave my house, in suburban Philadelphia at 4:30 AM. Our fearless leader, who obtained the tickets, got us to Manhattan in record time. We grabbed some breakfast and got on line at about 8 AM. Once we were allowed inside, we signed in, had our purses searched and then waited.

If you watch the show, you're familiar with Joey - a kind of goofy sometimes sidekick. Well, he was our warm-up guy. He instructed us on the finer art of hand clapping and sound effects like Mmmmmmmmm!During our wait, we could purchase items from the Martha wall. Who couldn't use a Martha hoodie? (It's a good thing.)


Then we filed into the studio.
It was huge and was laid out in a horizontal orientation. The audience was much larger than I expected. I think it was about 165 people. There was seating on the floor right in front of Martha. We found out that you had to "know somebody" to be seated there. (That's our fearless leaders next goal.)
Emeril was a guest, cooking from his new book - 20, 40 60. And YES! we got a copy of his book as a freebie. The show is live in NY, but not in Philly. The hour flew by. It was so much fun . We're all ready to go again. It IS a good thing.