THE SHOP EVERYONE TELLS YOU TO GO TO

Every sewing person I know has told me to go to MacCulloch & Wallis.

Every single time I've been in London, I have not gone to MacCulloch & Wallis.

Not for any good reason. I'd have a list, I'd have a day, and then the day would fill up with something else and I'd get on the plane still not having been. This happened more times than I want to write down.

WHAT FINALLY DID IT

I'd been to Hand & Lock.

If you don't know them — they're the embroidery house just off of Oxford Street, and they trace back to 1767, when a Huguenot refugee called M. Hand arrived in London and started making gold lace for military tailors. They hold a Royal Warrant as Embroiderers and Suppliers of Military Accoutrements, they did the embroidery on the 139 meters of tulle in Princess Diana's wedding veil sewing of 10,000 micro pearls, and they've worked for Dior, Burberry and Vivienne Westward and the list goes on. It is not a shop you wander into casually, and I wandered into it and bought an embroidery kit I did not need, but wanted to try.

Coming back from there I realised I was a few streets from the shop I keep failing to visit, with no excuse and nowhere else to be.

So I went.

WHERE TO FIND MACCULLOCH & WALLIS

Poland Street is just off Oxford Street, and the shop is about ten doors down — so you're walking along Oxford Street with all the crowds and the chains, you turn onto a side street, and it's right there. Technically that puts it in Soho. It doesn't feel like Soho when you arrive.

They've been selling fabric and haberdashery in London since 1902, and the shop is over two floors.

Upstairs is fabric, wool, and books. The wool is displayed on little sheep-shaped stands, which I did not expect and enjoyed more than I'd like to admit.

Downstairs is where I lost track of time. The basement is the haberdashery — zips, ribbons, needles, feathers, millinery supplies, embroidery. It's the sort of floor where you go down for one thing and come back up forty minutes later having had four ideas.

They also carry sashiko thread down there, and I stood in front of it for a while and bought none of it. I didn't know what colors I wanted or how much I needed for the kits I've had at home, and I wasn't going to guess. So I left it.

That's twice now I've done this in London — stood in front of exactly the thing I came for and walked out because I hadn't done the arithmetic first. There's a lesson in there I keep declining to learn. I have a rule for fabric if I love it and don't know what I will make I buy 3 yards, I need to apply that to embroidery thread.

WHAT I BOUGHT

Thread. Specifically the thread for the smocking dress I'd started in my smocking class in Italy, which had been sitting unfinished because I hadn't sourced the right thing for it.

That's the honest answer. I walked into one of the most talked-about haberdasheries in London and bought embroidery thread. But it was the right thread, and it was the thread that unstuck a project, so I'm counting it.

I'M GOING BACK

I'm in London again for a Dior Bar Jacket course with Thomas von Nordheim — six days learning how to make the jacket properly, which I've wanted to do for a while now and which is going to be its own set of posts. The sashiko thread is on the list this time.

IF YOUR GOING

The basement is the reason to go. If you only look at the ground floor you'll think it's a nice fabric shop and you'll leave, and you'll have missed the part everyone actually means when they tell you to go.

And if you're already in Soho, Fan New Trimmings on Berwick Street is a five-minute walk away. Do both. That's a genuinely good afternoon and you'll have to carry it all home, which is a separate problem.

MacCulloch & Wallis 25-26 Poland Street, Soho, London W1F 8QN Mon–Fri 10–6, Sat 10:30–5, closed Sunday