Fabric Shopping... African Style

I'm currently visiting family in Lagos.  If I'm perfectly honest it's not a place I feel completely comfortable in, never having lived here and with visits lately happening only every few years.  I always seem to get the blues a little when I'm here - maybe it's not having any friends here (besides family), or the heat, or a side-effect of the anti-malarials, or all of the above.  So this week I was glad that I made it to the market to do some fabric shopping.  I mean, what could be better than shopping for fabric to chase the blues away?  Especially when it's bright and colourful.

Bright Ankara fabric on display

My first stop was Balogun Market on Lagos Island.  It's a huge market selling practically everything, with a good portion of it given over to fabric - a few stalls selling general fabric, with the majority selling Ankara (the brightly coloured, wax-resist printed cotton that is associated with Africa), brocade and lace.  I was interested in the Ankara.  It is usually sold in 6 yard bundles but occasionally you might find someone selling offcuts or willing to cut into a bundle for you.

Prices are usually in the range of about N250 ([Nigerian currency is the Naira] which is just under £1) a yard to N500, but you could pay more depending on where you shop, particularly if shopping outside of the market.  With prices like that it would be easy to lose your head, but I exercised a bit of restraint.  Having said that, now that I'm sitting here writing this I'm starting to wonder if I should have bought more!

...and more fabric!

My second stop was Oshodi market.  A smaller and less salubrious market perhaps, but still with bags of choice and much better prices.

My fabric haul

As you can see I've definitely got a preferred colour palette - turquoise (my new favourite colour), pinks, lilacs and the occasional green.  I tried very hard to go for some different hues, but I kept coming back to those colours.  At this point I've got 25 yards of fabric, all for the princely sum of about £25!  I've told myself that this is enough, as I don't actually have any projects in mind for all this fabric.  In fact it's been an age since I did any proper sewing, but it's all so delicious and takes up so little space!  I'm not sure I'll be able to resist buying more if the opportunity arises, but then who knows when I'll get another chance...  Right?

The Knitting and Stitching Show

Last week I was lucky enough to make it to The Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace.  It was my first time at the show and I was beyond excited at the prospect of an entire (child-free!) day to look at stitchy goodness.  It was a pretty dreary day, but that didn't dampen my mood one bit.

I had a vague shopping list in mind, which I'm glad I did because otherwise I think that the whole thing would have been overwhelming.  That, the fact that I forgot to take more cash with me and many of the card terminals weren't working because of a lousy signal, and the fact that I refused to pay almost £2 for the privilege of taking money out of the cash machines that were dotted around saved me from spending A LOT more money than I did.

There were so many amazing, beautiful and inspiring things on show, but of course I also forgot to charge my phone so only came away with a handful of photos!  Please forgive the quality of the photos - I took them all in a hurry so that my battery would last and some of them are a bit out of focus, but here are some of my favourites:

One of the first things I came across was a display of quilts. I'm not a quilter but some of the creations were amazing, like this elephant quilt (I didn't see a maker's name).  I just love the colours in this.

Also this mini quilt "The Rose of Versailles" bu Kumiko Frydl.  From a distance it looks like pink fabric...

...but get close up and you can see that it's all been stitched!

I love this embroidered clock that I saw at the Embroiderers' Guild stand.  My picture doesn't do it justice at all (not least because it isn't quite in focus!), but it really was breathtaking. I also saw some fabulous examples of floral stumpwork, but alas no pictures :-(

One of the stands that I couldn't buy from because of a lack of cash and no card facilities was Aarti J which was filled with some of the most gorgeous trims that I have ever seen.  (Probably a good thing that I couldn't spend there.)

It was a great day out, but by the end of the day even I was starting to lose the will to look at more fabric!  I came away with a pretty good stash - several fat quarters and half metres of fabric including a good selection of Christmas fabric, fabric wax crayons, dissolvable fabric, quite a few magazine back-issues including Stitch, some linen thread yarn, buttons and brooch backs:

Did any of you get to the show?  What goodies did you pick up?