Living in Canberra there are not many options for buying millinery supplies, sure you can buy fabric from spotlight or lincraft and some proper millinery lining from addicted to fabric, but sinamay and felt or straw capelines or hoods, even proper grosgrain ribbon is hard to find. Unless I have a trip planned for Melbourne or Sydney I normally have to resort to buying what I need on line or by calling up Preston’s in Melbourne to order.

I like to buy from a website that has an easy to use store and where it is obvious that the payment methods are secure or that they use paypal or similar secure payment method.

The site I use most is De Lew Designs as their site is easy to use, they have a range of good quality millinery supplies, and the service has always been excellent. The store has a range of sinamays, feathers, felt and straw hoods as well as numerous other materials. I sometimes order the cheaper felt hoods to experiment new designs on.

If I order from Preston’s in Melbourne I often look at their page on the internet with the colours of their product so I at least have some idea of the colour of product that I will receive. If buying two colours of sinamay that are to be put together I will ask if they go together.

The biggest problem when ordering products from afar is colour, the colour on the web is never exact and I have brought feathers that I thought were a rose pink colour only to have them arrive hot pink and sinamay that looked a natural purple to find it was much brighter. For this reason I attempt to buy products in person when possible.

In the future I want am looking at buying products from Torb and Reiner in Melbourne to try some of the products unique to their store. Such as Jinsin and raffia and straw cloth.

If you can recommend any millinery suppliers or have had experience purchasing millinery supplies on line please leave a comment.