Friday, February 9, 2007

the fabric souk

yesterday, Thursday, was our Saturday equivalent. My daughter went to a karate camp for the morning, and I dragged long suffering dh out to the fabric souk with camera to try and capture images of the souk for you all. I found it almost impossible to believe when I saw it for the first time, and these piccies can only give a taste of what there is, but hope it helps you know what I'm talking about.

from the outside the buildings are not pretty. the inside is not exactly state of the art either. there are 5 different buildings, plus lots of other odds and sods, but every single one of the shops you can see in the first picture is a fabric, or notions or beads, or tassels etc type shop. now repeat that in five + buildings.

















these are a couple of halls inside one of the buildings, ground floor. upstairs are all the tailors, seamstresses, upholsterers etc working in the most minute amount of space. One thing you may notice is a distinct lack of colour or pattern coordination in any of the displays. they actually seem to prefer to combine as many patterns and colours as possible, in displays and in their clothes, although the latter are mostly hidden under the black abbayas.














these two are taken inside one shop. its actually one of the larger shops, alot of them are no more than 10' x 12'. they tend to have batches of shops together, so for example all the tassel shops are next to each other, the ribbon shops are in a row, and so on.














a tassel shop and the window of a ribbon and bead shop. don't know if you can tell, but all of these ribbons are embroidered with beads, I just like to stand and look at them, but then I'm a little weird like that.
I would like to say that we went first thing in the morning to take these, and normally its buzzing in these buildings.

11 comments:

Purple Missus said...

Are you the lucky one or what? This looks like stitchers heaven.
Did you buy anything? What are the prices like?
I think I'd be lost in a place like this - give me too much choice and I'm sunk.

Anonymous said...

Wow! thanks for a peek inside those shops. Oh I would be in heaven with all those trims to choose from!

Unknown said...

Is this what heaven will be like for us old stitchers, amazing place

Emmy said...

That is so much fun to go and shop there great place

Digitalgran said...

What a lovely place. I love those beaded ribbons and I thought we were so lucky to have Abakhan, which is a large warehouse type of place full of textiles etc.

Unknown said...

I so want to visit!! you ARE ONE LUCKY STITCHER!!

Helen said...

Hiya, thanks for your comments on my blog. It's lovely to find yours and I'll be popping in to see more for sure. The souk looks like heaven and I could buy loads of that ribbon "just to have"

Dianne said...

Oh wow!! You lucky thing! We are all coming over to visit - how many bedrooms do you have????

English Rose said...

thanks for all your comments, knew you'd love it. now if I could just pursuade them to stock name brands, rather than having to try and work out if this or that is the same as or will do the same thing as such and such!

Brown said...

hye, im staying in kuwait just few months back. and im interested to know where is this place.. so pls email me the address and how to go here. im in salmiya. thank you. nonoy_88@yahoo.com

Anonymous said...

those are such a amaizing.let me introduce my self i am mayur jariwala.from mukesh ribbon co.i am manufacturer of all kind of laces,trim and ribbon.would you please tell me which place is that you have been to...please
you can sent me your good wises at www.jari.in