Fabric Shopping In Tokyo: Yuzawaya and Japanese Liberty

It has taken me over a week to finally get around to pulling my Tokyo fabric shopping out of their shopping bags! In my defense, I didn’t want to do so until I had the time to photograph them and write this blog post, and with a house guests, a family wedding, and more, it has taken that long to find time. But now that I have, are you ready for the onslaught of words and pictures?!

There were two things, well, three… ok, four things, that I was super excited about doing during our holiday back to Tokyo:

1. Hitting up my old “local” Yuzawaya (Japan’s big chain craft store)
2. Going to Disneyland
3. Fabric shopping in Nippori
4. Eating all the Japanese food

Well, 1 didn’t quite turn out as expected (more on that in a minute), but 2-4 were as awesome as expected! We did both DisneySea and Disneyland (two separate parks), much to the kids’ delight. My favourite is Disneyland, though, and one reason is because I just adore the It’s A Small World ride. The outside has inspired quilters worldwide for years, but Tokyo’s has just recently reopened after being renovated, and the inside was even better than it used to (it reminded me a lot of the Frosty The Snowman movie aesthetics), so I was doubly happy.

Fabric shopping in Nippori was a blissful couple of hours to myself, and I’ll share more about that in a whole other post!

And as for the eating all the food? Well, that was most definitely ticked off as we revisited all our old favourite restaurants… some more than once!

But back to fabric shopping… I’ve previously shared a post full of tips for fabric shopping in Tokyo in which I raved about Yuzawaya in Tsudanuma. Myself and several other fabric-loving friends who had been to a few different Yuzawaya locations highly recommended this particular store for being large, convenient, and a great range of everything. Alas, no more. The store used to cover two floors, where most of one floor was dedicated to all sorts of fabric and notions and the like, but it has now been downsized to just one floor. The fabric selection alone is now well under a quarter of what it used to be, and it honestly bummed me out. Excited expectations dashed! This location was close to where we used to live, and I had such fond memories of going there! I did pick up a few Liberty prints, though, so I didn’t leave completely empty-handed.

The first were these three fussy cutting prints – small, medium, and large scaled prints. I need to finish up my I-spy economy blocks, and these will fit in like a treat! Psssst – like these? You could win a fat quarter of them over on Instagram!

And most of these Hello Kitty Liberty prints were also bought at Tsudanuma too…

Thankfully, I’m married to an amazing man who could see how disappointed I was and said that we’d just simply have to head into Tokyo to the flagship Yuzawaya store(s) in Kamata. How could I turn down an offer like that?! The next day, we headed into Tokyo for a day out in the city, which started with shopping and lunch in the shops under Tokyo Station, and then it was time for fabric shopping.

Yuzawaya in Kamata is actually spread over a few different buildings, and a few floors of each building at that!

Number 6 is the important one – helloooo fabric! Now, fabric shopping with the whole family isn’t the most peaceful of ways to do it. My husband is great, that wasn’t the issue, but I found one good trick that really helped with the kids – first direct them to the fun novelty fabrics section and let them ooh and ahh over finding familiar characters. Secondly, give them a job to do: “Guys, I really want some ice cream fabric, can you find any?”

So while they were off hunting, I first picked up some novelty fabrics on the first floor. These are destined to be backings for specific, future projects. Cryptic? Yes. But also a hint. Psssst – like these? You could also win a fat quarter of them over on Instagram!

I then headed upstairs to the second floor where the Liberty was located, and grabbed a few more pieces! These was this lovely green print for adding more green to the Liberty stash, and this unique colourway of my all-time favourite design! Very excited about that one.

I added one more Hello Kitty Liberty print to round out the haul to 8 prints.

And lastly, I was keeping an eye out for any orange Liberty prints – a hard colour to find! And I found these three. In the sale section, no less! A floral, a patchwork, and a tonal… can you spy the cats?!

With that, I was happily done at Yuzawaya, and it was time to head to Nippori… stay tuned for that post! So, yes, I now need to update that tips post, and I now know that if I want to go to Yuzawaya again, just head straight to the Kamata location.