Trip to Abakhan Fabrics

I spent most of last week with one of my site sponsors, Abakhan Fabrics, in Chester.  Despite working with them for almost 4 years I had never actually been to any of their shops there are none near me.  I've only ever bought off them online or at shows until now.  So it was very exciting to finally get to visit, I started off small with their Chester store and still managed to buy lots of fabric. I think if I hadn't had to carry it back with me on the train I probably would have ended up with an awful lot more.  Afterwards Will from Abakhan Fabrics told me they could have posted it down to me, probably a good thing he didn't tell me that before...

I think I need to work up to their biggest store, the Mostyn one, I gather I could easily spend a whole day (and probably several months wages) there!

I was amazed to see that you could buy fabric by weight rather than by length, and that in amongst their cotton prints there were loads of designer fabrics.  So by taking the time to pick through I managed to get around 15m or so of designer fabrics for just £60!  There's a pic of my haul below.  I'm quite into textured prints at the moment so although some of these look plain in the picture they are actually textured but some are quite subtle so don't show well in photos.  My favourite is the lovely book fabric, I think it'd make a great Kindle cover.

 

I wasn't just there for the fabrics, that was a lovely side benefit.  I've started delivering social media, SEO and marketing training lately (more news to come about that soon) so Abakhan asked me to come spend a few days training them.  We came up with some really great ideas so do keep an eye on their Facebook and Twitter over the coming months to see the changes.  

This picture is of me with their social media team from left to right Beth Abakhan, Will Abakhan, me and Lisa Reece.  I promise we didn't do all the training in the pub....

I've got a few more training gigs lined up over the next few weeks in Exeter and London which I'm really looking forward to.  It's great to get out and about as I run The Sewing Directory from home so tend to be stuck in the house most the time.  Plus it's so much fun coming up with creative ideas for businesses other than my own, I think I've found a new passion.