Monday Market Man

You may have noticed that I often reference my fabric purchases as being from the Monday Market Man.

This is Tony, an old fashioned open air market stall holder, with no website.

He often only gets one roll of each fabric so if I like it I tend to buy it in case he doesn't have any more next time. Fabric is usually £2.99 per metre, with the more expensive ones being £3.99.

Apparently he does occasionally get special fabrics in which would be more at £8.00 etc but I've not seen any of these. Tony has a double width, double sided stall in order to display as much fabric as possible. It is arranged by type and always in the same way so you can find what you want. From left is printed lightweight cottons, the right is other wovens e.g. things for trousers and jackets, round the other side there's a whle section just of knits (this is where I buy the most), then round into linen prints, tapestry and the newer speciality items e.g scuba.

None of the fabric is seconds and everything I have bought from him as worked out well.

If you'd like to see Tony's lovely fabrics he is available as follows:

Monday, Chesterfield, Derbyshire

Wednesday, Newark, Nottinghamshire

Friday, Lichfield, Staffordshire

on the open air market of each town from 7am - 5pm

I live near Chesterfield and can walk from my workplace to the market in my lunchbreak.

I don't know Newark well so can't comment too much.

Lichfield is a lovely place and well worth a little trip if you are an hour away. You could go for the day, visit the adorable Cathedral, where you can see the ancient book of St Chad, pop to the market, look round the shops, have lunch in the Cathedral cafe etc. It would be a delightful day out.

Apparently Tony did previously go to Loughborough market, but some sort of reorganisation there reduced the stall sizes below the size he needs to display the fabric so he doesn't go anymore, which is a big loss to my auntie who lives in the area.

--------------------------

Here's what I bought from Tony today

Left: 2m of black and white striped ponte at £3.99 a metre. I just loved the quality of this and have no idea what to make it up into. It would be great used with plain black ponte in a panelled dress perhaps.

Centre: 1.5m of polyester linen mix also at £3.99 a metre. I bought some of this the other week and have a partially contructed skirt I'll finish and share tomorrow, but really wanted to have a blouse as well so got some more before it all sold out. The shapes and colours in this print really reflect my natural colouring and the shapes in my features so I thought it was a real winner.

Right: 4m of a poly mix suiting twill in medium blue at £2.99 a metre. I chose this for a craft project (which I'll share later when complete) but decided the fabric was nice and I would buy the rest of the roll and see what I wanted to do with the rest. It is a good medium weight so could be anything from floor cushions to a skirt and would make indestructible shopping bags.

Can anyone enlighten me on what the writing woven into the edge stands for? This fabric smells a little musty so could be quite old. RUBIN TERGAL or maybe RURIN TERSAL??
(Updated to add apparently Tergal is a sort of good quality polyester fabric and Rubin is probably the manufacturer's name, it seems to be the sort of thing uniforms and overalls are made from, so would indeed make almost indestructible shopping bags using that stripe webbing I got from Bond's haberdashery shop in Farsely Leeds 2 years ago)