Other than the beautiful and expensive Marimekko fabric, and the usual stuff at Ikea, I haven’t run into much in terms of fabric/yarn/craft stores in the Turku City center. Some quick internet searching doesn’t turn up much either, but I did come across Jätti-Rätti online, which I think translates to Giant Tatters or something like that. It was about a 10-15 minute bike ride from my apartment, but on a bus line as well. I didn’t know what to expect based on the website, and the street and building had an unassuming light industrial/warehouse feel. Don’t be fooled! This place was amazing! Not tons in the way of quilt fabric, the emphasis here was more on apparel and home dec fabrics, but they have a little bit of everything, including notions and materials for rug making.

I thought the prices were pretty good and they had a lot of clearance remnant bins where the fabric is sold by the kilo. I bought some really pretty blue suiting, some clearance cotton for a skirt and a light weight cotton with elephants. It took major restraint though as there were loads of beautiful fabrics.

There are two textile stores in the city center that I can figure out so far. There is a fabric store on Yliopistonkatu, next to the camera store but I have no idea of its name! I took a picture of the biggest sign in the window, but google translate tells me that it means ‘cheap bargains’. Ha!

The unnamed fabric store is tiny, messy and again mostly caters to apparel fabric. There was a small quilting fabric section in the back, but all pre-cuts (10 euros per meter) and most of them were from Joanns. The best part of this store? All the buttons and zippers of course! Nothing super special, but if you were looking for buttons to finish your apparel project, no-name fabric store is your place.

But since I didn’t bring my sewing machine to Finland, I am doing some knitting. There is one nice yarn store downtown on Brahenkatu called Käsityö-Elisa. This shop is just round the corner really from the no-name fabric store, and is on the smallish side as well (though not as crowded and messy!). Most of the yarn is wool or wool blend, though the prices seem pretty good. They also have needlepoint kits, linen by the yard (or meter or whatever) and embroidery floss which takes up the front half of the store. There still might be a winter project in there for me somewhere, but I didn’t buy anything on this visit.

Lastly I think I just need a visit to Eurokangas, another fabric store downtown though might be too fashiony and curtainy for me. We’ll see!