What's in stock at Susan Briscoe Designs

Kimono, haori & michiyuki for Festival of Quilts

2011-05-27T06:23:00.000-07:00

As the kimono and haori sales stock is rather depleted at the moment, I've got these beauties on their way from Japan. Fingers crossed they will be here in time for Festival of Quilts. Exact prices will depend on how much it costs to ship them.

Kimono -

Michiyuki (kimono coats) and haori (kimono jackets) -

New tsumugi stripes - cotton - 14 1/2in wide

2009-09-23T03:59:00.001-07:00

Some of these are already here! Click the photo above to see a larger image.

After Festival of Quilts, I needed to reorder the ever popular cotton tsumugi stripes. This cotton is slightly heavier than regular patchwork cotton, about 141/2in inches wide and is still made for "everyday" kimono, although it is mostly used nowadays for patchwork and other crafts in Japan. Tsumugi has a slight slub to the weave, a characteristic of this kind of fabric (there are also silk tsumugi and wool tsumugi, which I also stock - it just means the fibre is spun, not reeled, as in the case of the silk). I use these fabrics for bags, for patchwork and for sashiko, where I'm wanting to use a stripe to line up the pattern. They wash and wear very well indeed. Preshrinking is something I recommend for all my Japanese kimono cottons - just steam them with a hot iron- as occasionally (though not always) they shrink very slightly over their length.

As I was trying to restock in time for Great Northern Quilt Show, there wasn't much time for the bolts above to arrive, so I had them sent to Stockton-on-Tees. Predictably, half of them arrived on the Monday after the show finished, but I will be collecting them in mid October, ready to take to the Malvern autumn quilt show.

Other striped tsumugis ordered yesterday (from a different suplier) include PURPLES! - unusual colours in tsumugi, so I am so happy to have tracked some down.

These new tsumugi cottons will be £7.50 per metre. There has had to be a small price increase as the prices in Yen have increased while the exchange rate Yen - £GBP has become much weaker than last year (the £ is worth only about 75% of last year's rate). Previously, the price hadn't increased since about 2005.

A new blog for new fabric lists

2009-09-22T16:06:00.000-07:00

I've already got my main blog, Sashiko and other Stitching, so what's this one all about?

Without making radical changes to my main website, www.susanbriscoe.co.uk, I thought it would be a good idea to have a place where you can find out about the fabrics (and sometimes kimono) I have available for sale.

I will post photos, information about the fabrics and prices. If you spot anything you would like to buy, you can then contact me with your order request via www.susanbriscoe.co.uk. This way, I can offer (eventually!) most of the fabrics I sell when I'm trading at quilt shows and other events without having to either separate online sale stock from show stock or measure what's left on every bolt after every sales outing, which is what I'd have to do if I added an automated shopping cart to my website. If you are in the UK, you will be able to order my fabrics by sending a completed order form in the normal way, accompanied by a cheque, or pay me using Paypal (the option for overseas buyers). Once again, I don't want to have to handle your credit or debit card details directly - it is more secure for you to go via Paypal.

This is just a brief introduction to get the bolt rolling, so to speak. I'll link all the ordering posts to this basic information once I begin listing the fabrics - and there are some gorgeous new ones on their way as I write...!