Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics: Store Review

All the wool!!! That green is hard to photograph!

Since leaving Los Angeles and my go-to mecca, The Fabric Store, my mission has been finding a suitable Bay Area replacement. So in the search for a new textile haven, this weekend I dropped the man off at Cal and headed over to Stonemountain & Daughter just down the road.

The store is fairly small, but that's Berkeley. The front part is mainly quilting, some shirting, and a few novelties. Its also fairly packed with notions, but because the store is so small the notion area has a little bit of a lot of stuff. For example, the Aurafil stand has super picked over and was replenished with some non-Aurafil threads. For a store dedicating a large portion of its space to quilting, I didn't see much cotton thread. The second part of the store is fashion fabrics, cottons, rayons, wools, silks, linens, and a significant amount of polys (yup, I'm a textile snob, even high quality polys that I have used sew and wear disappointingly). There's a good mix of knits and wovens as well. Each shelf is well labeled and the fabrics are easy access, no bolts on top of other bolts, no digging!

The service was, I'd say, average. There were some really nice women working there and some prickly types. One of the nicer ladies cut out my fabric for me and we chatted about sewing and what I was going to make. She was very patient with me when my phone wouldn't refresh and I couldn't access the yardages I needed. Earlier she was working with another customer and answering the customer's every question, she was super knowledgeable! Prices were high compared to The Fabric Store, but the quality of the fabrics I was going for were good and the bay area ain't cheap.

And just because I care about how easy it is to get to places, the parking situation isn't great. Everything out front was full, but I was able to find parking relatively closely in a residential area. The store is towards the end of a Berkeley main road.

I'll go back because I prefer shopping for fabrics in person and not online, but I still want to try out Britex. For quilting though, Stonemountain & Daughters has some beautifully curated stuff. My haul this time was all wool, a merino and nylon blend jersey for a dress and a wool crepe for a sleeveless blazer. I also got a Thread Theory pattern and some lovely buttons. Now, excuse me while I convert my entire wardrobe to merino.

Mood LA: Store Review

The fates of these beauties, from left: Megan Nielsen Cascade skirt, Named Kanerva shirt, and ByHandLondon Victoria blazer.

I got quite the windfall of Mood gift certificates for my birthday and Christmas last year and had a shit-ton of fun this weekend. I went all Scrooge McDuck in that place.

Let's do this chronologically:
The parking
Oh hell, the parking, its not fun. I get kinda anxious when I drive around downtown LA, some people are crazy. So you go into the alley behind Mood accessed by an entrance to the left of Mood on La Brea southbound or on the road to the right of Mood. They have a few spots in the back, 10 maybe, but they were already full. I was flagged down by a man asking if I was shopping at Mood and he told me to park in this area that had a big sign saying "No parking for Mood customers, you will be towed." Really, you want me to park here? "Yes, yes park." But I'm blocking these other cars. "Park here, park now." But I'm shopping at Mood. "WOMAN PARK." Ok he didn't say those exact words, but the connotation was there. So you give him your name, number, and car type and happily go shopping. Or so I naively thought.
After happily flouncing around Mood people started running around Mood yelling my car's stats. I ran to find them, "That's my car, please don't tow it, the man said I could park there, oh god I can't afford towing bills." Turns out they park cars three deep so when someone is done rolling in fabric mountains, Mood calls all the other customers to move their cars. Its not the most efficient, but I guess it better than parking 14 blocks away. Then the parking man told me to park in the emergency spot. The emergency spot? "Yes, over there" vaguely gestures over there. Um, ok, emergency, fire lane I guess. I get as close the wall as I can park and get out. Is this what you were talking about? "No, no, no, the emergency spot" gestures again. THE HANDICAPPED SPOT??? "Yes yes yes." This man hates me by now. Are you sure about that? "WOMAN PARK."
So the parking situation at Mood is not a blast, but at least you'll be prepared now. Good luck to you.

The fabric
Wow, that's a TON of fabric. The treasures are stored on tall (20') shelves that have about 5 shelves each. Fabric is stored 5 or so rolls deep. Its a bitch and a half pulling the bottom rolls out. Each roll has a little tag either hanging out or shoved into the tube with the price, content, and (sometimes) designer origin. Note the roll might have been stored backwards and you have to pull the roll out to the get to the tag. Some rolls are stored in buckets, much easier to access but not as space efficient.
All fabric aisles are simply labeled, shirting, cashmere, silk, etc.
There is so much fabric diversity and its wonderful to handle them in person. Most everything felt quality and you could spend hours and hours just looking at everything.

The people
This is where Yelp review scared the crap out of me. I didn't want surly staff ruining fabric shopping day. Its a sacred day. The cutting staff was wonderful! Helpful, not pushy, easily accessible. They helped me pull out rolls that were under 50 lbs of other fabrics, quickly cut things, nicely teased me about wanting to cut way more fabric than I needed (yes, they convinced me to buy less fabric), and offered sartorial advice when requested. They were lovely.
The checkout staff was super surly! Whoa. But you only have to spend like 4 minutes with them, so whatevs. Yes, they do have a doggie, but he was napping.

Mood was fun! I brought back beautiful fabric and had a ton of fun seeing all the possibilities on Mood's shelves. I highly recommend the store, especially if you have a handicapped placard :)