A Goodwill Gamble Part One

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.

I recently bid in a ShopGoodWill.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". The photos from the auction listing also gave me some good clues. In this pic, 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, hinting that it actually could be a quilter's stash.

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 looks like at least two or three yards of fabric, which would serve nicely as a lap quilt backing. I see more folded fabric that looks like yardage, too.

The pink camo piece at the top is fleece, which quilters sometimes use as backing or 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.

Now, a disclaimer: 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

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Valerean

Search This Blog