Japanese Wools and Wool Blends

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Wool. Who'd have thought it would be so hard to come by in Australia, the country that once 'rode on the sheep's back'?

At The Drapery, we've hunted high and low for suppliers of quality wool fabrics. Fabrics that are beautiful, but reasonably affordable for us to stock, and you to buy.
The woven wools we have stocked for this winter are from Japan, via one of our favourite suppliers whom we trust for excellent quality and service.

They are beautiful quality, gorgeous colours and very soft.

We believe the prices represent very good value: not cheap, to be sure, but quite approachable for the kind of 'investment pieces' you might want to make with wool.

Most of them also contain an amount of synthetic fibres. Gasp.

We thought long and hard about this.
How did it fit with The Drapery's 'natural fabrics' philosophy?
With our environmental concerns?
With - let's face it - our aesthetic concerns?

Here's what we concluded:
  • The fabrics did not feel at all synthetic.
  • We were instantly in love with a whole lot of them.
  • Shipping from Japan involves less 'fabric miles' than other potential sources, lowering the carbon footprint.
  • We have confidence in the quality of fabrics from this supplier, and confidence in the quality of Japanese fabrics in general.
  • The kind of garments and items that our customers would make from the wool fabrics would be likely to be long-term investment pieces (e.g. a jacket), rather than throwaway fashion.
  • 100% wool woven fabrics of a similar appeal are not only prohibitively expensive, they're extremely elusive. (We'd welcome anyone with tips!)
  • The synthetic content probably adds to the stability and durability of the fabrics.
  • We set a level of wool content that we were satisfied with: minimum 65% (there were lots of choices that were higher synthetic content).

The wools are really beautiful and we're delighted to have them in our shop (and champing at the bit to work with them ourselves). We hope you understand our reasoning for stocking the blended fabrics. Nonetheless, we're open to any and all feedback on the subject!

- Jane & Fiona xx

PS we will have some 100% wool knits from New Zealand coming in soon, and we have two genuine 100% Australian wool products in our shop: 100% pure new Australian wool quilt batting and 100% pure new Australian combed and carded wool tops, for toy stuffing.

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