After sewing through my two Ditto fabrics I received at Christmas in record time, I’ve gone and ended up with five new fabrics from them! A few Saturdays ago we drove down to Brighton (via Lewes) with friends so I had to stop in at their shop in the North Laines, and then last weekend Pip gave me two more fabrics for my Christmas pressie! Yay!
Here they are:
From L to R above:
- Mauve bamboo lycra jersey (2m at £9.99/m) – this coordinates nicely with my dark green stretch lace from Paris so I’m thinking I might use these for that Patrones pleated turtleneck…
- Dark grape lace (1m as a gift) – I’m feeling this is crying out to be a luxe skirt, but I need to find a good, beefy knit to underline it or it’d be very chilly indeed!
- Deep purple ex-Prada wool/poly sweater knit (2m at £8.99/m) – I’m thinking I’ll use this to make the cowl tunic from the Winter MyImage magazine after seeing GlobalMom’s version on PR.
- Grey ex-Versace wool/viscose rib knit (2m at £8.99/m) – James picked this out for some winter pyjama bottoms so he has some to wear that aren’t covered in Christmas Homer Simpson (poor man!)
- Cherry red bamboo lycra jersey (2m as a gift) – so many options for this, so the jury is still out.
I absolutely love bamboo fabrics, but I wanted to feel Ditto’s in person before ordering. I should’ve just trusted them, because these are FABULOUS. They have a really nice weight and drape, have great recovery, and didn’t shrink much (if any?) in the wash (note that we don’t own a tumble dryer). The owner actually pulled this mauve one out of the stock room for me – she said she can hardly keep these (and the organic cottons, which were equally lovely) in stock as people buy one lot then turn around and immediately order more. The Saturday I was in the shop, she said she’s run out of two separate colours of the bamboo just that day!
Let’s have a closer look at that plum lace, though, because it’s totally different on either side! The right side has a few fluffy chenille bits wit the prominent flower print, but the reverse (on the left) is entirely dark with a different prominent flower pattern in the lacework itself. There’s also a fair amount of lengthwise stretch to this, too.
While I was in the store, I was also sorely tempted by this ex-Gucci purple wool coating, but I decided I was unlikely to make another coat this winter and my sewing room is too small to stash such hefty fabrics for very long. But my god, it’s gorgeous. And there’s an orange creamsicle coating upstairs (yes, there’s an upstairs! I missed it the first few times!) that made my heart go aflutter, too.
I also had a good chat with the owner, Gill, and she was telling me how they’ll be revamping their website in a few months so they can get more continuity between their warehouse and store stock levels, be able to list more fabric (yay!) and also get a blog going, too. I don’t get down to Brighton very often, so I’m very happy that my favourite fabric store is going to have more stuff available online.
(and No, Ditto don’t pay me to say lovely things. They don’t even give me a discount! I genuinely do just like them and their super high quality fabrics this much.)