A Goodwill Gamble Part 1

The best way to purchase vintage textiles is in person, of course, but aside from thrift stores it's hard to find a brick and mortar dealing in such fabric, at least in my area. That's why I often shop online at Etsy, eBay and other sites.

The biggest problem I've found with buying vintage fabric online it's sometimes hard to tell exactly what you're going to get. Sellers often stage their lots so they look attractive, and hide obvious defects that might put off buyers. There are ways to analyze the available pictures, however, and let them give you an idea of the true worth of what you might get.

For example, I recently bid in a Goodwill.com auction for this big lot of miscellaneous fabric. The title of the lot was "16lb Lot of Fabric/Material, Precut Pieces & Projects, Quilting, Fleece, Variety" which suggests it could be a quilter's stash. The photos from the auction listing also gave me plenty of clues, too. In this one, which shows the entire lot, you can see a variety of prints and solids. In the back of the photo is a red and black piece that looks like patchwork to me.

There's definitely a pile of precut rectangles in this pic, which don't make sense for anything but a quilt. The white and purple polka dot piece at the back looks like at least two or three yards of fabric, which would serve nicely as a lap quilt backing.

The pink camo piece at the top is fleece, which quilters use as backing and to make rag quilts. Next to it is some light green minky, an expensive plush fabric that quilters use as backing for baby quilts these days. Also, look at all the selvages. It's easy to pick out a JoAnns fabric (the cat print) and lots of quilter cottons.

It's difficult to tell the condition of fabrics online, but I see only minimal fraying and no staining. Quilters tend to take good care of their stashes, so I'm confident it will all be in usable shape. I won it for the minimum $10.00 plus shipping (I was not going to increase my bid, either, so I got lucky that no one else wanted it.) When it arrives we'll see if I was right.

Image Credit: all of the above images came from the auction listing at ShopGoodWill.com.

Comments

Gifts

This is a story that starts out very sadly, so if you're depressed by the holidays you might want to skip the first part. As far back as I can remember I've dreaded the holidays. Being poor, having constant family troubles and belonging to a strict religion made that time of year always pretty unhappy. I just hunkered down and hoped to get through without being yelled at or punished because I didn't do something I was expected to do, like sit in church for hours without moving or making a sound while a priest spoke mass in Latin. Gifts were uniformly disappointing, too. My mother usually gave me dolls or socks or underwear for Christmas. I understand now as an adult that she was doing the best she could, and trying to save money at the same time, but as a kid I'd been told good children got what they wanted for Christmas. I was a pretty good kid, but while my friends received new bikes and cool toys and lots of treats from Santa, I didn't. I thought San

We Have Backsplash!

Yesterday my guy and I decided to chose this natural stone as the backsplash tiles for our new kitchen counters (which will be in the same quartz I'm holding at the bottom of the photo.) Since all the bids for installing the backsplash came in very high my guy is going to put it in himself; he's done a bit of tile work in the past, too. I swear there is nothing this guy can't do. :)

Detoxing Results

For twenty-four hours I left these five vintage cigar boxes sit with detoxing agents (baking soda, coffee grinds, dryer sheets, vinegar and Febreze) inside them to see which worked best to remove the tobacco/storage odors that came with them. I then removed the agents and did a sniff test. Before we get into the results, a reminder: none of what I do is ever meant to be expert advice, as I am certainly not an expert at anything. Follow my methods at your own risk, and please first consult an actual antique expert conservator or restorer to detox items that have value for you. Okay, let's see how my experiment worked. Baking soda (left) did nothing to remove the odors. I think if I let it sit for a longer period of time it might have done something, but for a 24-hour test it was a complete fail. Coffee grinds (right) removed 100% of the odors, and left behind definite coffee scent. I like that and think it goes very well with wood, but if you don't like the smel

Rayen

Search This Blog