Thursday, June 13, 2013

Thrift Store Find!


I often go to our local thrift store (small, run by a local church) looking for clothes for the four year old, or baby gear for the (due in 37 days as my DIL reminded her FB friends today) new granddaughter. 

Lately I've been looking for fabric remnants, and have had moderate success on a few things that I can use for bags / linings or something small.

Today I struck gold!

These are indoor iphone pics (it's storming this afternoon) so use your imagination a little bit on the colors.

These are all some kind of samples, I have no idea what from/for nor do I care!

These four are a knit fabric.  The best way I know to describe it is kind of like the knit pant suits ladies used to wear.  The black has the same green palm tree the white has.  The design is embroidered.  These panels are all 26" x 26".

I'm not sure what I will do with these since they can most likely only be used in a project with each other due to fabric type.  


These three seashells panels are also 26" x 26" and are 100% cotton.  They are a very heavy fabric (not too heavy for quilting I don't think, but much heavier than what I bought at JoAnn's last week!


And there are three corresponding/matching sailboat pieces, all also 26" x 26" and 100% cotton. 


This owl fabric is 40" x 26" and is also 100% cotton. 


There is also a floral panel that is 40" x 26" as well.  


And I got all of this for (are you ready for it?).......

THREE  DOLLARS!!!!

They were in three bundles, for $1 per bundle.  

There were more bundles, but not being able to tell for sure how big the panels were I only bought three bundles.  I'm going back tomorrow!!  

There were a couple of bundles that were probably some kind of upholstery (very very heavy, one was fuzzy!) so I won't bother with those, but it will definitely be worth $1 per bundle to see what's in another couple of bundles.  

Yay me!!  

UPDATE:

The moral of this story is ... if it sounds too good to be true ...

I used the labels on the fabric to do a little research and found a couple of the fabrics for sale at JoAnn's.  However, these fabrics are DRY CLEAN ONLY!  What!!  Argh!!

Since they are 100% cotton, I decided to do a little experiment on two pieces (NOT the owls!) and toss them in the wash anyway.  I put them in cold water on the gentle cycle.  I hung one to dry and put the other in the dryer on LOW heat.

They are still in great shape, and they are still 26" wide.  However, they are not only 39" long (they started out at 42").

So, I guess this means these fabrics will need to be used for something other than quilts!  That's ok though because I can make some great bags out of them (which is what I was thinking of doing with them anyway when I bought them).

So, in spite of this startling discovery, I still think this find deserves a Whoop Whoop, and I'm still going back today to look at the other bundles again.

(Edited to add: yes, I did go back.  See Thrift Store Find - Part Deux.)

4 comments:

  1. You definitely struck gold! Enjoy your new finds.

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  2. I love Thrift Stores! Wish we had some of those in Greece.

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