Friends

So, this won't help people from outside of Sacramento (Or within reasonable driving distance) though I am always willing to be a satalite shopper for people who just want fabric but:

Once upon a time, my friend Dy had mentioned a really amazing fabric store that had extremely inexpensively priced yet quality fabrics. Organza, dupuoni silk, sari material, brocades, and lovely embroidered and sequined brocade fabric, etc. She had given me a card that, while the prices were good, I had the feeling the store wasn't what she was talking about.

Yesterday I decided to get started early on Kublacon costuming. I wanted to re-do a few dresses from the past (might as well!) as some of them were quite awesome, they just need some tweaking for me to fit them now. While I had extra fabric for two of them, I still needed material for two under skirts, and enough orange fabric to fit my amazing orange dress of dooms. And so.. I went traveling. I went to: Joann's, Hancock's and finally High Fashion Fabric on Franklin Blvd. High Fashion is amazing and has a great variety, however the prices are around the same as JoAnn's and Hancocks.. some things being cheaper, and some being more expensive.

As I am standing at the cutting table at High Fashion, morosely realizing that the fabric I have found for the orange dress is an "almost, but not quite", this older gentlemen motions for me to come over to him. I do so, and he whispers (so the clerks can't hear) to me about a little fabric shop hiding up the street, right past 21st street, on Franklin Blvd. He says "look for the sign that says "Designer Fabrics", and tells me that they have all kinds of the types of fabrics I want, for way cheaper prices. He was only in Hi Fashion for blue-jeans material..and the little hidden place carries soley sewing materials that cater to the Indian, Chinese and Pakistani crowd.

So I decide to give it a try before I go pay over $300 for what I need...

I did find it, the address is: 4701 Franklin Blvd, Ste B, Sacramento, CA 95820. Don't bother calling, the woman doesn't have an answering machine, but she seems to open her shop 7 days a week, so it would make sense to be able to go after 10:00, which is when most fabric stores seem to open!

When I went inside it was like going into an cave o treasure. There were thousands of bolts of amazing lovely fabric in all types and colors. None of the cotton, polycritter, etc though. Just silks, organzas, brocades, sequined crazy fabrics, etc. The lady Lubna, just goes over and pulls a bolt out of the pile for you, and uses a yard stick to measure it out, and then cuts it right there. I grabbed some amazing crinkle organza with red/gold weave, and asked her how much.. she says "$3 a yard."... um. Normally that would go for $14 at JoAnn... This made me quite happy, so I find the off white cream silk (with rose pattern!) for my underskirt... she says "$3 a yard". Dude. That would go for at least $9.99 a yard ... So I go over to where some of the fancy sari fabric is. All silk, embroidered, sequins stitched into it, fully covered in lovely designs.. and ask what the price is "$8 a yard". ARE YOU SERIOUS?! That exact fabric was going for $56 a yard at high fashion, and other stores didn't even carry it.

World Class Textiles will be the place I get fancy fabric for bellydance etc. Hell, now I could actually afford to do things on comission that were amazing, as I wouldn't be eating the cost of the fabric. (It sucks to charge $500.00 for an outfit, because $400.00 of it is the fabric cost...)

She sells thread for the serger, or industrial machines. She has no other items, no notions, boning, buttons, etc. But who cares? I can go right up the road to High Fashion for those things.. mwa ha!.

In total, I walked away with $300.00 of fabric for $50.

WOOOT.

Current Mood: excited

Woken up to a loud, grinding, weird machine like sound from outside my apartment? Check! Have splitting headache? Check! Still feeling sick... Check! Dreamt of math all night? Check! Cat just effectively stalked and ate my oatmeal while I was gathering up notes? Check! Yep. It must be finals-day.

Math final at 10:15... I am sure I will indeed take the entire 2 hours to finish it. After that, I am going to go out w/ a friend, and then possibly go home to collapse into a drooling useless thing on my couch (which is now outfitted with soft fuzzy pillows and blankies), or maybe zone on WoW. Either way.. I won't be around much today.. so take care everyone! I will talk to peeps tomorrow.

:D

Current Mood: anxious

Had our last Bio PSych class last night... and he told us there is no final. We did a sleep study lab the last class, and I found out something I didn't know (ok, a lot of somethings, but this one in particular would be of interest to some of us) did you know that alcohol doesn't actually help you sleep?

While it can get you in a relaxed delirious state, which precludes sleep, it heavily disrupts and even stops REM sleep, which is what we actually need to have. So the Professor explained that, while it is one thing to drink something to calm down, it is important not to "fall asleep drunk", as you will continue to have sleeping problems, and can even develop sleep disorders if you regularly use alcohol as a sleep aide.

We also learned that again, while there are a lot of herbal remedies and over the counter remedies for insomnia or sleep disorders, the ONLY WAY to cure insomnia is to reset the biological clock in a non-destructive pattern, otherwise all the other stuff does is relax you... oh and apparently Bi-Polar people are just screwed, as are people with children, as both cause insomnia that we can't control. wheee.

Current Mood: awake