How to Fabric Hunt–In Oklahoma
Yes, I’m a fabric junkie. Every trip must include a side trip to fabric hunt. If you want to know how I do this, keep reading. And no, most of you won’t ever go to Oklahoma, but here’s how it went down. Also, the see steps can be used in almost any major city in the United States.
Big Family, Big Dreams…Mo’ Fabric
My mother has a very big family. She also is one of the youngest children in the family. Unfortunately, when you are the daughter of one of the family’s youngest members, not only is almost everyone older than you, but you attend many funerals, anniversaries, graduations, and the like.
Sadly, my uncle died. He’d lived, played, worked, and retired in Oklahoma. Yes, the Sooner State is in the middle of the country. My husband and I attended the funeral, and after the funeral march, family hugs, and bad church potato salad, we sneakily escaped to these fabric stores. This is how I got into sewing in the first place, my love for fabric (you can read more about that here).
Weaving Grief into Healing…again, Mo’ Fabrics
Don’t judge me. Grief is terrible and requires time, tears, and maybe retail therapy to heal. In a moment of solitude and shopping– fabric shopping after hearing people sob for hours your chest stops hurting for a minute, and you breathe.
We only had a few days to map out our journey and time slot for fabric hunting. Unlike our fabric journey to Melanated Fabrics in Atlanta, GA, or digging through narrow shots in Athens, Greece.
Three Steps to Fabric Hunting While Traveling
First, start with a hard Google search for US fabric stores. This task is easier said than done, especially for people like me who sew and are extremely picky. Time is precious. Bouncing around town in a rental car using GPS to find these stores is not always fun, so do as much research as possible. I eliminate upholstery fabric shops unless that’s what I’m hunting for. And even though I’ve certainly found home decor fabrics that made wonderful skirts or tops, it’s more of the sewing and fabric exception than the rule.
Case in point, the Fabric Factory is 99.99% upholstery fabric. Since there were only a hand full of fabric stores and a definite time crunch, I popped in. If you love home dec fabrics, it’s worth a whirl, but there are no fabrics here for us garment-making gals.
Secondly, make a phone call or two or three. Fabric stores notoriously have odd hours. Families or individual shop owners own them. There is nothing worse than driving all over town to find that the one store you wanted to visit is closed for Aunt Susan’s 90th birthday gala.
Third, map out your fabric-hunting journey. The last stop on tour was The Stitching Post. OMG! It’s the cutest little fabric shop. Every town should have one of these–wall-to-wall fabrics, super nice folks, vintage sewing machines, and, did I mention super nice folks.
Most of the fabrics were for quilting, but they have every little thing a sewist could want without going to a big box name-brand store. The Stitching Post is what sewing and fabric shops used to be.
What’s your strategy for fabric hunting while traveling?
