Fabric and Notions at the Albert Cuypstraat Market

Most visitors to Amsterdam will make a trip to the famous Albert Cuypstraat Market, an enormous year-round outdoor street market. There's food and flowers and fashion and fabric and furniture amongst other things (some even not starting with 'F'). But there's also a wonderful little notions store that you might miss if you're not careful. Along the North side of the market, hidden in the shop behind a rather boring booth that's mostly unexciting yarn, you will find Jan.


Jan De grote Kleinvakman

They have just about every notion that you could imagine, and some that didn't even occur to me before seeing them there (everything from crochet flowers to safety eyes). They have a huge wall of trims (and then more in bins). Unfortunately my picture of the whole wall turned out blurry, but below is a peek at one tiny bit... just picture this extending floor to ceiling for a long, long ways. One type of trim I'd never seen before was bias tape that was polka dotted and then edged with little lacy scallops. It came in about 6 different colours and was so pretty!


Trims

And taking up nearly as much space as the trims were buttons! All the trims and buttons were nicely sorted by colour or style too, which makes it easy to scan for what you like.



Buttons

For fabric, head back out of this dimly lit cavern of goodies, and into the market. There's one booth that sells "craft pieces" that are pre-cut lengths of cotton. There's a huge variety in style from strawberries and flowers to Japanese block-print batiks to hilariously touristy stuff with blue windmills and tulips. I couldn't resist this map patterned piece today... and I don't even have a sewing machine here yet! Incorrigible!


Global Map fabric

If you want to find this booth particularly, it's nearer the Ferdinand Bolstraat end on the South side, and he's usually only there on Friday and Saturday. But there's lots of other stalls selling all sorts of fabric off the bolt too.


Rolls of batik fabric

Update: There's a website for the stall that sells the pre-cut lengths: Hobbylapjes.