Sunday Stash #63 – Tokyo Grab & Stash

Oh heavens to Besti! You don’t know the half of it! I took a quick jaunt over to Tokyo last weekend, and I’m talkin’ on the ground for sixty-eight hours quick. Of course I made time to do some fabric shopping, more on that in a hot minute.

What I didn’t make time for was a hurricane-blizzard-kamikaze-typhoon that hit Tokyo on Saturday and pretty much shut every form of travel down. My nine hour flight home turned into a thirty-nine hour travel adventure. This included sitting nine hours on the plane parked at the gate waiting to leave, followed by being kicked off the plane to sleep in the airport terminal when they finally decided to cancel the flight. As we were leaving, we were reminded, “Please don’t take the pillows.” Exsqueeze me? Fortunately, when the lounge opened in the morning, I high-tailed it straight there, where I spent another twelve hours waiting for the next flight back to Sydney.

But once I finally got home, I got to dive into all this fabric deliciousness that I purchased from Tomato and The Anonymous Shop in Nippori Textile Town. Because I was fighting a snow storm, and trying to get back to make my flight (the irony!) it was a quick grab and stash affair. Blossom Heart Quilts has a great travel guide for fabric shopping in Tokyo that definitely came in handy!

I found all of these old Echino half meter cuts at The Anonymous Shop for like five dollars each. Ridiculous, right? I think I could start a business model of flying to Tokyo just to stock an Etsy shop of Echino fabrics, hot damn!

Once I got to Tomato, I headed to the quilting cottons level on the fourth floor and proceeded to ravage the colour-sorted bins. I think I still have a few callouses thumbing through thousands of fat eights and fat quarters.

You’ve heard of Radiant Orchid, right?

Most of the fat eights are selvage-free, but you know I opened each one to make sure I got one with a selvage. I work hard for the fabric!

Why not add just a bit of Laura Gunn? When I finally make this quilt, it is going to be a wash of textured water colours. I want to dive into that ocean!

I didn’t buy any Briar Rose, (I must admit I’m not an HR devotee), but a fat quarter of the Whimsical Cricket in the Clover, ah, might as well!

These two prints from Pat Bravo’s Bohemian Soul line were such a surprise find! That is what I love most about this shop, you’d be just as likely to find Mendocino and Neptune as you would the latest Violet Craft. They’re just all tucked away together, and you know I can smell a fabric find from miles away! Lord!

Speaking of Violet, I finally picked up some half yard cuts of her Waterfront Park line. Very clever design work at play with these. That yellow on the bottom is a half yard of Art Gallery’s Lace Elements–not my typical style, but it is Art Gallery. Enough said.