It was with real sadness that I read that G Street Fabrics was closing its two Northern Virginia stores concentrating all their efforts on their Rockville, Maryland store. It is my hope that they restore their Rockville store to G Street’s former glory.  It has been obviously in great decline for some time.  This includes the store in Centreville, pictured above, which is the one closest to me (and was also my Bernina dealer).

Today’s Rockville store is far from what it used to be just about a decade ago. I remember from its glory days when G Street in Rockville (at it’s older location) was a magical wonderland for those of us who love sewing and quilting.

You could find the most wonderful buttons, trims, and fabrics of all descriptions. They almost always had everything you needed to make sewing fun, special, and successful. They priced their fabrics fairly then…not the ten to twenty-five percent higher than the going market rate that I often found in their stores in recent years (thereby forcing me to buy elsewhere since I have a limited budget).

The old store had step-up stages of magnificent fabrics from all over the world. You could step up onto the stage for their specialty fabrics and enter into wonderland–silks, cottons, rayons, even high end polyesters, embroidered fabrics, and beauties you could only imagine.  There was another stage with fabulous tailoring wools, high-end blends, and other wonders for all seasons  where I used to buy the fabrics to make my late husband’s suits and coats, and my tailored suits for work when I worked in a job that needed professional tailored suits.  I still have several of those pieces in my stash.

They had laces, bridal hat forms, veilings, and everything one would need to build a fabulous wedding dress.

The remnant tables were really fun.  It was like treasure hunting to go through what was there and once in a while I would find a fabulous remnant of a specialty fabric for a bargain price that I could use for touches in clothes that would make them special.

It was there I learned that fake furs could be as beautiful and feel and look almost like the real thing, and I made myself a fur jacket. Even their non-natural fabrics were plentiful and gorgeous.

Downstairs they had a huge floor where half of it was dedicated to home decorating and the other half to quilting.  They often had some magnificent quilts on the wall as you walked down.  The quilting section was as large as any local quilt shop and it was where I first got interesting in quilting.

It was fabulous. I miss it.  Sew I wish G Street well  in this new direction.  I hope that this move will allow them to return the remaining store to the mecca for sewists to visit from all over the country (I started visiting when I lived in Ithaca, New York decades ago).  It would make the hour of driving through thick traffic to get there from time to time well worth it for me, and I am sure, for many others.