Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Buying Fabric in Korea: Gwangjang Market

A few weeks back I visited Seoul for the first time. My friends put together an awesome tourist-y itinerary and they included a visit to a local market to find fabric made in Korea. After a super fun morning at Namsan we headed to Gwangjang Market to try out local food (and where locals eat). There were fabric shops already near the entrance of the Gwangjang Market, but my friends said there was an area designated for fabric in the market.



After lunch we headed to the second floor of the market where the fabric stores were located. The area looked a lot like Divisoria where you can have wedding dresses made. The area had multiple stores offering hanbok dressmaking services. There were a few shops that offered ready to wear hanbok (about KRW220,000 for each).





The shops only had fabric made in Korea. Most of them were silk fabric ranging from KRW5,000 to 18,000 per yard. The shop keepers were very surprised that I only got a yard of fabric. They probably though I was making a hanbok for a baby.






The fabric was amazing and really beautiful. I will have to think long and do a lot of research to use the fabric I bought for quilting (I don't think they use it at all for quilting but will see).

I found the fabric market to be very different from other places I've been to. Mainly because they only offered fabric made in Korea which made it really unique. The fabric I think is also created mainly to make hanbok so it would really be challenging to create a quilt out of it. It will probably take me a lot of time but I hope to make something beautiful to give respect to the fabric. 

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