Fabric Market in Utrecht, Netherlands

The one sewing-related thing I needed to do while in the Netherlands was visit the Saturday fabric market in Utrecht. The market runs every Saturday and takes up a road in the town. It’s called the Lapjesmarkt in dutch. I also wanted to get to Kantjes Boord, a lingerie fabric store in Amsterdam, but decided that my suitcase was full of enough fabric and I should save my money for the Baltic sea cruise. I also came across fabric stores in Estonia of locally made linen, but couldn’t see a print that grabbed me. There was wool yarn in Estonia and in Finland as well that was incredibly tempting and I am kicking myself for not grabbing a skein. It was so soft.

Utrecht is a gorgeous city with canals and a university. Bikes are everywhere in the Europe so you’ll see a ton in my pictures.

Lapjesmarkt was amazing and I brought home just over 25 metres of fabric. It was enough for me.

The street is lined with covered stalls that sell any type of fabric you can imagine. Cotton lycra was in abundance, as well as quilting cotton, but there was also a bunch of home textiles, leather and suede, silk, denim, etc. There were also vendors that sold zippers, thread, buttons, and other things. Everything I bought was quilting cotton, cotton lycra, or stretch denim. The prices are really decent even with the exchange rate in comparison to what is available for me here in Canada. We do pay a bit of a premium in Canada, but I also haven’t seen a lot of the prints available online in the USA or in store for less.

 

Here’s the fabric I bought!

1.5 metres each of quilting cotton (6 metres total). I got the quilting cotton to make a commemorative quilt for the trip. I plan on making a rag quilt and just need to get some solid colours and the quilt batting.

2 metres of stretch denim. It is lightweight and will make a perfect shirt dress. It has little deer on it and stars.

I went nuts with the cotton lycra. Here in Canada, we seem to have a lack of good quality cotton lycra. I went nuts with all the choices. Originally, I set myself a budget of 100 euros and, in my excitement, I exceeded that by 80 euros. Ooops!

Here is all the cotton lycra:

 

2 metres each of the glasses/bow ties and the fox/squirrels, 1.5 metres each of the feathers, bunnies, and giraffes, 1.4 metres (end of the roll) of the digital cats in crowns, 1 metre each of the pinapples and cherries, 3 metres of the flamingos, 2.3 metres of the jellyfish (end of the roll).

I have plans for Concord t-shirts, a Colette Myrtle maxi dress, Barrie Briefs, and much more. I can’t wait to start sewing.

After fabric shopping, we had breakfast at Cafe de Journal.

Then unfortunately we had to return to the hotel because I messed up my shoulder carting around the heavy fabric. On the last day of our trip, though, we came back to Utretcht and saw more of the sights. It was a great last day. More on that later and the highlights of the trip. I thought I would post about the wonderful fabric market first since you will be seeing a bunch of this fabric very soon!

 

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