Montmarte is a fascinating area of Paris and it also is a major fabric shopping center and so we were naturally attracted to the area. Montmarte is a bit of a hike from where we were staying in the 8 ème Arrondissement but we were able to easily travel there via the Paris Metro.

Our first stop was Les Coupons de Saint Pierre, a stop that was purely by chance- yep, we were taken in by the window displays. 🙂 A note about fabric shopping in France- much of the fabric is sold in the form of coupons which are 3-meter pieces (usually) and in fact, this seems to be the predominant method of selling and many stores only sell fabric this way. However, one can find places that sell by the meter. Les Coupons is one of those places that only sell by the coupon; for our purposes this can be an issue since we usually need dress lengths for our fabric.

Next, we took a look at Marché Saint Pierre, one of the largest fabric stores in Montmarte. Featuring six floors of fabrics and notions, this is a good place to start your fabric search. Unfortunately for us, there was really nothing that stood out as a “must-have” but if we lived locally, this would definitely be a “go-to” fabric store.

We then found these interesting fabrics in red, copper/bronze, and blue-green at La Folie des Tissues:

Finally, we found this exquisite silk lampas at Karin Sajo Collection:

This store is small but features an exquisite selection of specialty fabrics that will work for a variety of projects. It’s not cheap but it’s definitely worth it. 🙂 Finally, just for completeness, we also visited several specialty shops outside of Montmarte but they had nothing that was practical for what we do.

So how’s the fabric shopping in Paris? Overall, from our brief visit, it seemed that there wasn’t as great a selection as we found in London and what we did come across had a limited selection outside of the more common fabrics that one can find anywhere in the world. I suspect that there’s probably a lot of specialty shops that we missed and so we’ll certainly be more alert on our next trip- there has to be more out there, especially given that Paris is the center of haute couture.  🙂 Au revoir!