by Sherri Sylvester | Dec 17, 2014
We’ve got a treat for you today – the 11th post in the Canadian Online Fabric Store series. I’m interviewing L’Oiseau – an Alberta-based shop with international shipping (and they are giving away fabric to one lucky winner!). I’ve known about L’Oiseau for a while now, but I did not know about their amazing collection of apparel fabrics!
(Before we get too far – L’Oiseau asked me to mention that they are having a HUGE Winter Clearance sale right now. Click over to take advantage of some amazing prices! – Ends Dec 21, 2014)
Here is a run-down of just some types of fabric they offer: Cotton Poplin, Jersey Knit, Sweatshirt, Denim, Corduroy, Organics (Hemp, Bamboo), Velour & French Terry. Not to forget the ribbon, iron on transfers, labels and patterns. They also have a Knitting Shoppe – in case you knit or crochet. How’s that for an introduction?
I happen to know about a little something that is under our Christmas tree (ahem*cough*hint*serger!*cough) so I was especially excited about owner Michelle’s collection of knit fabrics. I’m hoping to make good use of my stash and then start ordering from her!
I’ve included a few favorite fabrics here – but you have to know that I have spent more time browsing this shop than I have for any other interview post to date. There is just so much goodness! Every page on her site has something I’d like to sew with and there is a great variety, lots of solids and some stripes too.
Here’s a little bit more about L’Oiseau via a little bio Michelle wrote up for me:
We started our shop April, 2013 and as a result of my endless search for great fabric. We focused on Euro fabrics and products because I had been personally so inspired by their fun, playful attitude toward sewing. And their quality, colour saturation, and functionality is unparalleled. We wanted to offer these great fabrics to Canadians and beyond!
Thread Riding Hood: Why did you decide to start L’Oiseau Fabrics?
Michelle: I wanted the Euro fabrics for myself! I loved their quality and the certifications that came along with them and I spend so much of my time and resources scoping out the fabrics that one day my husband implied maybe I should just open a store. He may have been joking but I thought, “What a great idea!” And here we are.
Thread Riding Hood: What is your favorite type of sewing project?
Michelle: Kids clothing; hands down. Colour, texture, applique, ribbons; you can do it all and really your only limitation is your imagination. And they love it…what’s more rewarding than that?
Thread Riding Hood: What is something coming up in the near future that you are especially excited about?
Michelle: We are simplifying and I am excited about that. We are going to focus on more of the great quality, basic apparel fabrics because they always work and are a sort of launching pad for amazing things.
Thanks Michelle! I love what she says about sewing clothing for kids. It’s so true!
Michelle has generously given us a “Choose Your Own Adventure” giveaway today! One very fortunate winner will get to choose 1 metre of any fabric from the L’Oiseau Fabric Shoppe!
This giveaway is open to everyone, internationally from today until midnight on Tuesday evening, December 23, 2014. Use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter – and if you don’t have Facebook to sign in with, just use your name and email address. There’s a “click to enter” no social media login entry too!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Disclosure and Privacy Policy: Please note, this is a sponsored post. I asked L’Oiseau to be a part of this series, and as a result they have decided to become a sponsor of Thread Riding Hood, making this a #sponsoredpost. I will never recommend or highlight a shop that I do not love, and my opinions will and have always been my own. Thanks for reading!
by Sherri Sylvester | Dec 4, 2014
This is it. Your perfect Christmas gift. (or Birthday, or Any-excuse-will-do-day!) I cannot tell you how excited I am to be a part of this amazing fabric subscription program put together by my sponsor, Fabric Spark.
They have teamed up with some amazing bloggers to offer a specially-curated fat quarter bundle every month! I don’t know about you… but I get a tad giddy at the thought of owning something one of my favorite bloggers has chosen. It’s like a little celebrity-crush and I get to own something they have put their mark on. Now… as I write this I realize that it sounds a little stuck-up, and please forgive me for it, because while I was writing I forgot that I am of those bloggers! Eeeek! It makes me so thankful for all of you who are reading this. Thank you so, so much for following along!
I am thrilled to be included in this amazing group. I’ve been following Maureen Cracknell Handmade – one of my most favorite blogs ever – and Very Shannon – Go Canada! – around the web for quite a few years now. Daryl (Fabric Spark’s owner) has recently introduced me to Fresh Lemons, Blue Elephant Stitches (also Canadian!), Modern Sewciety (amazing podcasts!) and the Tattooed Quilter. Each month, starting in January 2015, you will receive a bundle of 12 fat quarters, specially chosen by one of these great bloggers.
You can sign up for the Monthly Sparks monthly fabric subscription program here.
The winners of the Thread Riding Hood kits from Fabric Spark are posted as well! The giveaway was for three kits – one TRH Reusable Lunch Bag Pattern kit and two TRH Fabric Gift Bag Pattern Kits. I was excited to be able to email the winners earlier today. And even more excited to receive their lovely emails back – best part of my job! Congratulations to Anita, Jackie & Michele! I hope you enjoy using the kits (and please send photos when you are done?!).
Have a lovely Friday and a great weekend everyone!
by Sherri Sylvester | Nov 20, 2014
Wow! This post marks the 10th Canadian Online Fabric Store in our series! Now… only about 48 more shops to go – yikes! Alright… We’ve got a fun one for you today! I’d like to introduce you to Karyn, owner of Duncan & Kate Fabrics. This PEI based shop sells organic cotton knits (and ships internationally) – hooray for apparel fabric! And it’s c-uuute! (P.S. There’s a super generous giveaway and a discount code for this shop at the end of the post – scroll down if you can’t wait.)
When Karyn contacted me I was so excited to see her shop and hear her story. She stocks Lillestoff, Stenzo, and their own range of exclusive Duncan & Kate Fabrics in both her Etsy Shop and on her Facebook page. If you love the European style knits, you are in for a treat. She’s even got some stripes to choose from – and you know how hard those are to find! Her story is amazing, and she’s designing some of the fabrics herself! I had such a hard time narrowing my favorites down… here are only a few of them.
In a little bio about her shop, this is what Karyn had to say: I am a Mum of two young children, and I love to sew for them! Our family moved at the end of 2013 from Scotland to PEI, Canada, to be closer to my family (I’m originally from PEI) and its been so wonderful being back in Canada again. It was a hard year for us as my husband was only able to join us (due to the immigration process) in September of this year – and we are pretty ecstatic to be back together as a family again now! In fact, my Love Home fabric design is all about childhood memories of “home”, and I look forward to sharing all of these amazing childhood traditions and memories with my children, and hopefully with their children too some day.
Thread Riding Hood: Why did you decide to start Duncan & Kate Fabrics?
Karyn: When my daughter was born, we lived in a really rural area of Scotland, so I started sewing things for her as there were no shops nearby, and I fell instantly in love with all the amazing organic knits available in Europe. I got a lot of compliments about the clothing I made, and people started asking me to make things for them. Which of course, meant I got to order more fabric; it became my husband’s favourite thing to say (while rolling his eyes!) “You have so much fabric, you should open your own shop.” I took his advice and opened my shop selling organic European knit fabrics in early 2013. We have since moved to Canada, and I am so pleased to be able to offer amazing European sourced organic knit fabrics that are not readily available in North America.
Thread Riding Hood: What is your favorite type of sewing project?
Karyn: I usually sew clothing for children and women from knit fabrics at the moment. But, high on my list of things I want to learn to sew is a quilt. I think they are just so beautiful, and I am totally in awe of people who can make quilts. My grandmother started to put together pieces for a quilt in the early 1950s but she never got to finish it. I have all the pieces and some day I will finish it, and then pass it down to my daughter. The colours in the fabrics are so amazing and bright, and its really special to me to have the pieces that my Grandmother had hand stitched together.
Thread Riding Hood: What is something coming up in the near future that you are especially excited about?
Karyn: In addition to some new fabric designs I am currently working on for our own range of organic cotton knits, I will also be stocking a new range of amazing European organic sweat shirt fabric and a range of solid colour organic cotton knit fabrics in the next couple of months. I am also excited to be introducing a new program for small business owners who sew items for sale; eligible members will receive a discount on all purchases, special offers from time to time, and flat rate shipping. Anyone who is interested in applying for this new program, please send an email to hello@duncanandkatefabrics.com.
Did you catch that bit about her grandmother’s quilt? What a great project – and all of you handmade sellers won’t want to miss her new program (with discounts!) either!
Karyn has generously given us a “Choose Your Own Prize” giveaway. These are the best because you can pick whatever you’d like from the Duncan & Kate shop! One very fortunate reader will win a $50 Gift Certificate to the Duncan & Kate Fabrics Etsy shop… just imagine what you could buy with that!
This giveaway is open to everyone, internationally from today until midnight on Tuesday evening, November 25th. Use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter – and if you don’t have Facebook to sign in with, just use your name and email address. There’s a “click to enter” no social media login entry too!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Ok… so you’re ready to start shopping? Many thanks to Karyn, you can click over to Duncan & Kate Fabrics and use the code “THREADRIDINGHOOD10” to get 10% off your purchase. This discount is valid all of the way up until December 10th, 2014. Hooray! Here are a few more fabrics to get you started.
by Sherri Sylvester | Nov 14, 2014
I’m so excited to have released the Forest Glen Satchel Pattern today! It’s extra good because I have another fabric shop discount code for you, to help you get the fabric you need to make the satchel! Today’s featured shop is Stay Home Fabrics, and it’s owner Lindsay’s birthday today too! (Scroll down to get the discount information at the end of this post.)
If you’d like to know more about Stay Home Fabrics, their owner Lindsay has been a part of my Canadian Online Fabric Store interview series. She runs the shop from Saskatchewan, Canada. And I’m please to announce that she has recently started shipping to the US as well. It’s so great that more of you can benefit from her shop!
Some amazing things are happening at Stay Home Fabrics, Lindsay has been ordering up fabric like crazy lately. She’s gotten four new lines in recently with more on the way. Today I’m featuring Utopia from Art Gallery, Eclectic Modern from Tim Holtz, Fox Field by Tula Pink and Beyond the Backyard from Camelot fabrics. Whew!
Check out the gorgeousness below (I could only include a few from each line!) and go and get yourself some goodness – discounted of course. Hooray!
Save 10% on your purchase at Stay Home Fabrics by using the code “threadridinghood”. Lindsay has generously created this as an ongoing discount code. Lucky us!
(Please note: Stay Home Fabrics reserves the right to discontinue this code at a time of their choosing.)
by Sherri Sylvester | Nov 7, 2014
Hooray, It’s a new series! Thanks to some generous sponsors and partners, I am now able to post a fabric shop discount every so often along with some of their newest gorgeous fabric lines. Today we are featuring Double Decker Fabrics. (Scroll down to get the discount information, it’s after the pretty fabric!)
If you’d like to know more about Dorienne’s shop, Double Decker Fabrics is one of the first shops I interviewed in my Canadian Online Fabric Store series. She runs the shop from Alberta, Canada – and ships internationally!
Dorienne happens to have just received two of my favorite collections right now – and they are both Art Gallery lines! Winged by Bonnie Christine (Those butterflies are amazing!) and Emmy Grace from Bari J, whom I’ve just started following on Instagram – talk about gorgeous inspiration there!
To get 15% off your purchase at Double Decker Fabrics use the code “winter15”. Dorienne has been very generous and your discount can be used on anything in the shop, including sale items! (Discount expires November 21, 2014)
Reader Feedback: Which fabric is your favorite? (I know I have a hard time choosing! I think it would be either the Wingspan Melon or the Budquette Dayspring print)
by Sherri Sylvester | Oct 22, 2014
It’s time to head to Creativ Festival again! This will be my fourth time going, the others are blogged here: Spring & Fall 2013 and Spring 2014. I’ll be on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter a lot this weekend, I’m sure. So if you can’t be there I’ll try my best to share it with you.
I love being able to see my favorite online shops in person, buying fabric, and browsing fabric, talking to some of my local shops that have booths… buying fabric… ummm…. more fabric?! This year, though, I’m going to concentrate on talking to people, (instead of the fabric!) I am feeling that my stash is a tad overwhelming. While I’m sure I will buy more than fabric than I “need”, I’m going to do my best to keep the total down!
My friend Laura (Seams Sew Laura) and I are taking my brand new postcards down to Creativ early Friday afternoon. Side note… As I think of the number of amazing blog related things happening during the next little while I’m reminded how grateful I am to be working with so many amazing people – and especially for all of you reading! Thank you all so much.
Once we get to Creativ, I’m going to abandon my usual methodical (start at row 1) way of shopping and make a beeline straight for the centre booths. I’ve got two very exciting things to see right away. I’m super happy to say that I’ve been working with Fabric Spark (booth 525) and Warp & Weft (booth 624) behind the scenes to kit my new patterns and sell them during Creativ!
Here’s a sneak peek of two new patterns I’ll be releasing as pdf patterns here next week. (I’ll save the proper introductions, and just write about the kits today.) Daryl from Fabric Spark and I have been working together to produce The Reusable Lunch Bag and Fabric Gift Bag Patterns specifically for the Creativ Festival! They are super beginner friendly and super-fast and fun advanced sewist projects! I was over at Daryl’s shop Monday of this week kitting them with her. It was a treat to see her stash of fabric and get to mix and match bolts together for the kits. (Wow!)
The Fabric Gift Bags are kitted in several different combinations (including the amazing one above!) – everything from gorgeous pinks and yellows to masculine gray and blue to Christmas-themed (… yes.. it’s coming!). The Lunch Bag Kit will be available in 4 different laminated cottons – Tula Pink (x2), AMH and Amy Butler. These two patterns will be available for sale un-kitted as well, and the Gift Bags are especially made to fit in exactly 1 yard of fabric – so you can mix and match whatever colour scheme your holiday season fits into!
The Forest Glen Satchel pattern is finished and I’ll be releasing it as a pdf download here in the next few weeks. In the meantime, it is available as a paper pattern, exclusively from Warp and Weft during Creativ Festival. The satchel was designed with Elizabeth Olwen’s Cloud9 collection, Wildwood, and kits of all three Wildwood fabric combinations chosen by Elizabeth will be available. It was also fun to collect six of my Warp & Weft-related projects from around my house and deliver them to Esmari today. It’s a shame I didn’t think to take a photo! They are all related to free tutorials that I’ve written for use with Warp & Weft fabrics and will be on display over the weekend, so you can see them up close and in person.
On a seriously amazing other note! The Forest Glen Satchel is photographed in Elizabeth Olwen’s Wildwood Look Book and I’m fairly certain the Satchel Elizabeth made at the workshop is on its way to Quilt Market in Houston to live at her booth. (Eeeeekkkk!) I am so re-gramming any photos it shows up in this weekend!
I’ve got a list of other booths to visit at Creativ and I’m hoping to be surprised by a more modern fabric selection. Every year it seems to increase – lucky us! There are also a few sponsor shops and some I’ve interviewed that I can visit as well. Fabric Spot (booth 327) always has a huge selection – and I picked up the Cotton & Steel tigers (above) from her last week, along with a Lush Uptown charm pack. I’m excited to see Sylvia from Country Clothesline (booth 323) and Alanna from Fridays Off (booth 118) again as well.
Wow – I guess that’s “it” for now. What a lot of stuff to fit in with such a small word! Most of all I’d love to meet you. I’ll be there Friday and Saturday if you’re in the area. The most fun part of my job is connecting with all the fabric lovers I’m surrounded with!
Will you be at Creativ this weekend? What are you most looking forward to doing there?
I happen to know about a little something that is under our Christmas tree (ahem*cough*hint*serger!*cough) so I was especially excited about owner Michelle’s collection of knit fabrics. I’m hoping to make good use of my stash and then start ordering from her!
