Friday, July 28, 2017

Quilting Shops in Tokyo: Tomato

I mentioned in a previous post about my visit to the Nippori Fabric Town that I was only able to visit one shop -- Tomato. It's the biggest fabric shop in the area. If you're coming from Nippori Station it's on the left side of Nippori Chuo Dori street. It's fairly easy to find since it's five floors worth of fabric goodness.


Before I went to the main shop I made a detour to a smaller Tomato shop that had everything in it on sale. I managed to buy fabric at just 100 yen per meter/yard! I went crazy and bought a lot of backing material since it's much cheaper than what I buy in Divisoria in the Philippines. I was also able to purchase wadding with backing at 200 yen per meter. They had a wide variety of fabric on sale. What was interesting to me were the Japanese fabrics.





I thought the detour was already THE Tomato shop and I was ready to go back to the hotel. I was ecstatic when I found out that it was just a tiny "sale" shop and that the main shop was just a few steps away. I was awed with the endless bolts of fabric from the entrance. I didn't know where to look first! Here's what they have floor by floor at Tomato -

1F - Discount Floor; 2F - Knit Floor; 3F- Luxury Fabric Floor; 
4F - Cotton and Character Print Floor; 5F - Patchwork and Bag Floor

After quickly going around the ground floor I headed straight to the fifth floor where all the quilting fabric is located. My eyes feasted on the available Western and Asian fabric organized by type and color. It will make you dream about having your own fabric room! I had already splurged on purchasing backing so I held back in indulging to purchase new quilting fabric. 





It was in the fourth floor though that I gave in. They had a gazillion kawaii fabric. Star Wars, Hello Kitty, Pooh and famous Japanese characters like Gudatema, Doraemon etc.. I wanted it all! But they were one of the most expensive per meter so I controlled myself from going crazy. 



After going around the fourth floor a couple of times I just browsed through the third and second floor to check out what was available there. I ended up getting a few things from the first floor since there were a lot of interesting fabrics. 

I hope I would have time to visit Tomato again when I get a chance to visit Tokyo. 

How to get there: head to Nippori Station (I have details here).

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