Fabric Shopping in Tokyo!

I had the most incredible holiday in Japan this summer and my top priority once I knew we were going to Tokyo was to go fabric shopping! I have heard so much about the amazing fabric shoppping experience there and it didn't disappoint. The infamous Tomato fabric shop is by far the best fabric shop I've ever visited! With five floors packed full of incredible fabrics which are all great quality and surprisingly cheap for Japan I spent the best few hours ever there. It's taken me a while to get around to doing a write up about the farbic shopping but here it is!

One of the reasons that Tokyo is so famous for its fabric shopping is that there is an entire fabric district. My mum and I took the metro to Nippori and were immediately greeted with signs directing us to the fabric shops (which I almost missed as I was so excited, despite how obvious they were!). We only had an afternoon, I would of course have much prefered an entire day but as usual the rest of my family don't rate fabric shopping quite as high up on their priority list as I do! Even so, a few hours gave us more than enough time to buy a large amount of fabric. There is a plethora of fabric shops in Nippori but as we were stretched for time we decided to stick to Tomato. Tomato actually has several different shops, we went into two but spent most of our time in the big one. The floors are divided by fabric type and I of course headed straight for the jerseys.

The first few fabrics that I chose are all plain ribs. Tomato had the most amazing selection of plain knit fabrics in pretty much every colour and shade imaginable. They were also very well priced at the equivalent of around £4 a metre and quite wide for a rib. I love the bright orange colour of the top one but my favourite of these is probably the light grey. It's a lovely colour and feels so, so soft. I've actually already made two of these up - and two Lindens too! Here is the grey one and here is the purple.

I also bought a couple of really cool zips. I've been looking for zips with circle pulls for ages but they're surprisingly hard to come across. I bought two for myself (but wish I'd bought more!) with the intention of using one of them to make a zip neck top out of the orange rib.

The next two fabrics are my favourites. I have been looking for the equivalent of the bottom navy check for literally years and I couldn't believe it when I found it! It is just one of the most gorgeous fabrics I've ever sewn with. I made a pair of Anima Pants with it and they're one of my favourite makes ever. The top fabric is for my mum, but once again I love it and I'm quite jealous that it's for her! It feels a bit like flannel and it was bought with the intention to make another one of these tops.

The final few fabrics I haven't made anything from yet as they're quite summery but that's not to say I don't love them. The colours are just so lovely. The light blue feels like Airtex - the texture isn't really visible in the photo but it's got small indents in it. I bought it to make a polo shirt out of and I can't wait to make it! The pale pink fabric is just gorgeous, such a beautiful colour and the softest jersey. I haven't quite decided what to make out of it but it will probably end up as one of these tops. The final fabric was bought on a bit of a whim, you can probably tell that I don't usually sew with floral fabrics! There was something about it that I really liked though and I think it will look really nice as a t-shirt.

So there it is! My Tokyo fabric haul. All these fabrics were from the same shop and apart from the two checks they were all bought in the same main Tomato building. I really made the most of the experience as it's not somewhere I can go back to and I love everything I bought.