Sparked by a comment on Instagram, which said: "Where did you get your fabric for your photos? Fabric like that is rarely available to home sewers!" we paused and looked at each other. If you know our origin story a bit, you know: we are not a big wholesale-buying company. sisterMAG Patterns is based off the life-long sewing projects of our designer and mom Evi, who is just a truffle dog when it comes to finding online fabric stores. She admits herself that she shifted much of her shopping to online shops as many of her favourite fabric stops nearby closed down at one point or the other. There are still some favourite offline destinations, but those are very few.
When preparing this list of links we asked Evi first: What do you consider when choosing fabrics online?
What to Consider When Choosing an Online Fabric Shop
Evi doesn't shy away from hour-long online searches and we have not bought whole-sale for commercial clients. Thus all of the shops below ship to home sewers and individual customers. What Evi looks for first, is a very good quality and less cheap prices to be honest. We think: if you invest the time to make a garment yourself, the fabric should hold up for years and years to come!
Also the structure of the online fabric store and whether it has a good search function and filters can be helpful. But foremost: how is the description and the information about the fabric – that's what makes the difference!
What to look for when choosing fabrics online
Don't judge the book (fabric) only by its colour ;)! Of course the first look, pattern and colour is the most important when choosing fabrics. However the quality of fibers should be your next glance. Evi says: "100% polyester is just a no-go for many projects. That is only feasible when making a rain jacket or other outdoor textiles. I always look for – at least – a good mixture and combination. There should be a high percentage of cotton, wool or viscose." Next to the fiber quality, Evi also looks at the weight of the fabric because that "says so much about the consistency of the fabric! Just from looking on the picture, I'll never be able to guess whether the fabric is suitable for my project. Take a gorgeous striped fabric that I want to use for a blazer, for examples. If the weight is 120 g/m2 it will simply be too light-weight to hold the structure of such a garment. If you see a weight of 85 g/m2, that will be a super flimsy and light-weight fabric that you can – at most – use for some blouse or dress patterns."
Last but not least you should read the description because many fabric shops go the extra length of describing fabrics like: "falls softly", "with stand", "feels like paper". That is the last thing you should consider before buying.
Fast delivery can be a plus but we usually just look for "some way" to get it to our home without paying a fortune for shipping :D.
Let's go shopping – our list for fabrics galore
Here is our list of online shops we recently purchased from. As a side note: we live in Germany, thus many on this list are based in Germany or ship to Europe. We hope you can find some gems with beautiful fabrics for your next sewing project!
Thus to all of our international customers: What are your favourite online shops in America, Australia etc.?
Online Shops from Germany
-
Anita Pavani: https://www.naturstoff.de/shop/en
This is by far the source of MOST of our fabrics. It is a shop with more than 1000 fabrics made from natural fibres such as cotton, linen, hemp, silk, wool and many more. We've ALWAYS received super high quality fabrics when we shopped there, however the prices can be a little higher. We recommend always shopping their "Restekiste" (leftover box). They have a great filter system where you can even filter by weight. They ship worldwide. -
Mahler Stoffe: https://www.mahlerstoffe.de/shop/
This is actually a whole-sale shop but they have an online shop for home sewers. -
Schöner Stil: https://www.schoenerstil.de/
They also sit in Germany, shipping to Germany, EU and internationally. -
Karlotta Pink Fabrics: https://karlottapink.de/
A fabric shop for ethnic fabrics from all over the world. They ship to countries in the European Union. -
The Tulle Factory: https://www.thetullefactory.de/en
Just the best shop for high quality tulle (and you know, we love a good tulle skirt ;))
Online Shops from Europe
-
Fabric House: https://www.fabrichouse.com
Fabric shop from Italy that ships worldwide with high-quality fabrics, focus on sustainability -
Merchant and Mills: https://merchantandmills.com/eu/
One of the BEST customer services we ever experienced in a fabric shop – no customs hassle, helped us with an invoice and a wrong shipping adress right away! Super good experience (and some AMAZING fabrics!)
Etsy – the source of beautiful fabrics – our favourite Etsy sellers
-
StoffAtelierFrese: https://www.etsy.com/de/shop/StoffAtelierFrese
Also one of our frequently visited shops with many beautiful choices! -
KatschinkaDesign: https://www.etsy.com/de/shop/KatschinkaDesign
Many beautiful patterns both for children and adults, focus on Jersey, Musselin, Fleece etc. -
Koa Fabric: https://www.etsy.com/de/market/koa_fabric
We are smitten with these designs and fabrics, however the customs process for getting the fabrics has been a bit of a nightmare, as they are shipped from South Korea [do contact them directly as shipping is calculated by default from Etsy and they can give you a better deal when buying a few different fabrics]
As we are always searching and trying out new fabric shops, we'll update the list as soon as we find another great source of online fabrics. If you have a recommendation, we would LOVE to hear and try them out ourselves.
P.S. We have a lovely series called "DIY City Tour" in sisterMAG where we have done city trips with the focus on DIY stores, haberdasheries or fabric shops. You can check out the cities here:
