Some birthday shoppin'...Dressew

I mention in the last post that Brett took me to Vancouver on Monday to do some fabric shopping as a make up birthday present until my actual present arrives. I wanted to break up my shopping excursion into several posts, to avoid having an overly long post and having anyone reading this from getting tired a quarter of the way through. You'll see why.

Anyways, after Three Bags Full I went to Dressew for a few hours. Yes, I said a few hours. I could spend a whole day in there if I could! I'm just glad that Brett and the little one went to North Vancouver to have lunch with Brett's brother while I went crazy in Dressew. If you've never heard or never been to Dressew and you're a sewer or a crafter, I HIGHLY recommend making a visit there!!! And I'm happy to find out that they finally changed their ways and are now accepting debit cards as a form of payment!! Before, it was cash or cheque only! I know, who uses cheques anymore? And I know a lot of people that rarely carry cash either. So imagine my delight when I saw that they accepted debit cards now!! I realized after making the move to Victoria just how much I took that store for granted. Like Joni MItchell says, "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone". That is, until you are faced with a lack of notion options at a cheap price and aisle upon aisle of inspiration. Here are some photos I managed to snap inconspicuously:

First floor, a few aisles dedicated to costumes/Halloween gear...after that, aisles after aisles of fabric!

Downstairs is where the notions are kept. It is pure heaven...

Zippers galore! This aisle goes from one end of the store to the other...and there's another aisle like this dedicated to zippers!!

A wall of buttons...the other side of the aisle is full of buttons too, with racks of even more buttons in the middle of the aisle!

Half of the basement is loaded with floor to ceiling, jam-packed shelves of trims.

I had to take this photo of the pink trim section...cause well, you know me and my love of all things pink!

I seriously, seriously, seriously love Dressew! I had stopped taking pictures cause I really got into shopping/bargain mode. So I didn't get the chance to take a photo of the bins with bags of notions for less than a dollar, or the wheels of lace, webbing, and elastic all for less than 5 bucks. I really had to hold back and be very selective with what I got. On the drive to Vancouver I had to make up a budget for all the stores that I was hoping to visit, just so that I didn't go overboard and end up with no money left for groceries for the rest of the month!!

I was quite proud of myself and of my willpower and didn't break the bank or go over budget. My bill didn't even go into the triple digit range!! I was going to take a bunch of photos of my loot, but when I took a good look at my bag of goodies, I realized that there was just way too much.

A bag of notions...

Out of the bag...

I figured it was pointless to try to make it all nice looking, I ended up just being selective with a few items to show...

Like the cones of serger thread at a dollar each...in hot pink!! My camera/computer couldn't really pick up the color, but trust me when I say that this is hot pink. This color is really hard to find here in Victoria, so I picked up 8 cones...since my serger uses 4 cones at a time. I have visions of contrast seam finishes dancing in my head...

To continue on with the pink theme: some hot pink rick rack trim! Again, my camera/computer couldn't pick up on the hot pinkness and so it looks kinda red here. There were a few shelves that were loaded with huge wheels of rick rack in all colors and sizes. I spotted the hot pink at the very back. I was über happy to discover that it was only 25 cents a metre!! Here in Victoria they charge at least $1.25 a metre! Maybe that's why I never buy trims here...so with that said, I scored 10 metres and am thinking I must ration this out on projects evenly.

And the real deal? These bags of zippers for 99 cents. That's right, a bag of 10 zippers for a dollar. That's 10 cents a zipper!! And no, they're not cheaply made zippers either, they are the YKK zipper brand! I got individual zippers too, each less than a dollar. It was a little frustrating when I first moved to Victoria, when I had to pay full price for a zipper. In the past 10 years I've always had Dressew to go to, or my school. So you better believe it when I say I stocked up!
Now you can see why I love Dressew sooo much! I'm hoping that I can get some major sewing done before next month roll around. I'll be heading back to Vancouver mid-July for a concert and am hoping to make another stop there. But first, I really should tackle some of the stuff that I just got!

Dressew Supply
337 West Hastings St.
Vancouver, BC