Tanah Abang- Fabric Heaven

Tanah Abang is said to be the largest textile market in all of Asia. A few of my sewing friends all went together last week. We met at one house and carpooled to Tanah Abang which is located in northern Jakarta.

Did I tell you yet that this place is huge?  It's at least 7 floors ( I don't know what's on the floors above 7- it might be parking garage? We got picked up on the 7th floor...)). The first 2 floors are fabric tokos (small and medium stall shops). The upper floors are garment shops. The majority of the fabrics are very ornate with beading, sequins, etc., but there are some shops that sell cotton fabrics. That's what we were after.

A couple of the ladies had been there before but there are so many individual shops and several different sections of the building it was difficult to find what we wanted. We did manage to find what we were looking for: cottons!  Most of the ladies are working on quilts and I had been thinking about trying to work on one. A friend had just gotten a new quilting magazine and she brought it in the car. Voila! I found directions for a quilt I loved. I just had to find the fabric for it. All of the ladies were pulling out bolt after bolt of fabric and between the 5 of us and the shops we visited I am now the proud owner of all but one of the fabrics I need for my quilt. It really was a group effort. It was really wonderful I had so much assistance from those skilled in the art. Most of the ladies got help from the other ladies at each shop. We left with quite a few huge bags of fabrics. Tanah Abang is like a multi-story gigantic closet, warehouse sized, with bolts of fabrics in piles and stacks from the floor to 9 or 10 foot ceilings.  There was also a "notions" area. I could see it off in the distance but we didn't have time to check that out. We were there for several hours and were tired and hungry so we didn't check out that area. Here are some photos of fabric and shop signs in Tanah Abang.

 

Part of the reason I took signs of the photos is so we can find the stores on our next visit. One shop owner saw several of us taking sign photos and he went and got business cards to hand out. This last photo is just one part of one floor of one area. The sign was by the elevator as we went to leave. It was the first sign of any kind indicating where shops are actually located.

What did I come home with? Ta da!

All this, more than 20 m of fabric for 340,000 IDR (~25 USD)