Feeding A Fabric Addiction, Garment District Style

I have a few weaknesses.
(Stop laughing, Howard.)
Among them:  fresh blank notebooks, good pens, yarn,
china, books, other people's old furniture, and . . . fabric.
(I left out chocolate, and onion dip.
Umm... not together. Unless there are anchovies.)

Having a daughter whose livelihood involves fabric means that I sometimes get a fascinating glimpse into her world -- a world of narrow, packed fabric shops and specialty stores that feed the fashion and costume industry in New York City, and beyond.

Below, Anne, in her natural habitat, in a fabric shop on West 39th Street in Manhattan's Garment District.

Not all the shops are this overwhelming.  Some are more so.  And some are more spare.

Anne lives and works in Washington, DC, now.

A benighted city without a garment or fabric district.

(You have to watch where you walk; fabrics at your feet!)

Can you spot Anne?

(And more material overhead.)

(With walls and walls lined with bolts of endless color and texture.)

Good fabric stores are like crack to me; I want ALL the fabrics.

I want to bring them home with me and gaze upon them.  So much potential.

Anne is a theatrical costume designer, and after two post-grad-school years

of freelance designing in and around NYC,

recently accepted a full-time job as a costume designer and teacher in DC.

Currently designing and building costumes for a production of Moliere,

meaning 1660s clothing, she could not find all of the fabric she needed locally.

So Columbus Day weekend, she Amtrak'd it home to Jersey, and her familiar city fabric shops.

(Need buttons? Some shops have aisles and aisles of them.)

On hearing of her plans . . . "Please, may I come with you?"
And I did.  And it was glorious and such fun!
5 days later, I am still basking in the glow of whole blocks of specialty shops.

(Got trim?)

(Need a little bling?)

Anne found the specialty fabrics she wanted, as she knew she would.
New York City always comes through; you can find anything.

The little specialty shops have not changed much in generations.  The names of the owners have changed, but the shops are still catering to a niche clientele that knows what it wants.

You may be offered a better price to seal a deal,
it is wise to be an informed consumer,
and ... something that I find charming ...   receipts are still written out by hand.

Okay, once more . . . Where's Waldo?  Oops, I mean Annie!

And, no, we did not go to Mood.  

But W.38th, W.39th, W.40th Streets, and 7th Avenue?  Oh yeah.  Oh yeah ....

I even got a bag full of $1 and $3 necklaces at a place on 7th.  

Cheaper than Goodwill.  :-)

Bonus:  It was lovely having Anne back home for a few days.

And, she made gluten-free, grain-free pizza for dinner on Sunday.

Yum.  I do miss that child's cooking!

I hope your Thursday isn't as wet and blustery as ours!  -- Cass

And now, a Linky Party!

It's Treasure Hunt Thursday, at From My Front Porch To Yours.

Click here, my pretties!

The Kindergarten And Potted Plant Association

Yes, that is a mouthful.
And yes, The Kindergarten And Potted Plant Association
was an actual organization of society women in 1890s New York,
who endeavored to bring beauty into the lives of tenement-dwelling 5-year olds
by giving them potted plants to care for.

The Rich, as they say, are different.

And in the case of these babes, well-meaning but apparently not terribly bright.

I'm betting the kids would rather have had shoes.

But more on this later.  First, a trip downstairs to our newly French-drained cellar.

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I think of this project as

The Nineteenth Century Strikes Back!

Ta-da-da-DA-da . . . 

While these cement floors look innocent enough, in reality they are the Supermen of their ilk.

 They were, according to the work crew, the hardest they had ever encountered.

And their attempts to put a pipe through any of the foundation walls for drainage?

That Old House was having none of it.  The foundation was too hard and thick, impossible to breach.

 Which kind of amuses me.  Those old guys knew how to build, didn't they?

Use granite stones, and you can pretty much bank on them not going anywhere without a really big fight.

I shared the spooky progress pictures of this project earlier this week.

Now, the first of the afters; French drains in place, and major appliances and utility sink

no longer gallivanting all over the basement, but meekly back in their rightful places.

 Instead of our original plan to escape to the beach house this weekend, Howard and I

are going to try and get the whole basement cleaned, the few remaining shelves painted,

and some heavy duty plastic shelving units installed, put in a dehumidifier, all so that the mess upstairs

can be tidily stowed back downstairs, where it belongs.  Where it will be dry.

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Now, about those well-meaning but air-headed ladies of the Kindergarten And Potted Plant Association?

They have a role in the new play Anne is working on, The Giantess.

She's building over-the-top giddy costumes for them.

I'm hoping there will be leftovers of some of her fabrics, because they'd make dandy decorative pillow covers.

How 'bout this bustle?

Imagine that -- a time when you wanted your husband to say,

"Gee, that dress makes your butt look big!"

 As you can see, we still have the cellar boxes and bits in the study.

And the hallway.

And the kitchen.

And the dining room.

Yeah, no beach house for us this week, unless we work really fast tomorrow afternoon! -- Cass