The Best Places to Thrift Fabric

Since I've done a lot of fabric thrifting this year I thought I'd do a post about the best places to find quality vintage fabric. The number one place I recommend is a local thrift store you can visit. Nothing beats being able to hunt for fabric in person, and you can see, inspect, measure (and smell!) all the fabric before you purchase it. It also tends to be the cheapest source of fabric. I've done best at my local Goodwill shops; I think a lot of my luck has to do with the fact that I reside in the country, and there's a huge quilters' guild in my area.

Many vintage textile sellers have shops on Etsy. It's a good idea to first read the reviews on the shop before you buy from them, and even with all good reviews I recommend making a small purchase first. Most sellers on Etsy are great and won't try to swindle you out of money for bad fabric; I've built a list of sellers I trust to provide me with what they promise.

Online auctions are another decent resource for vintage fabric, which you can often buy in lots. eBay tends to be a bit on the pricier side, but they have the most detailed listings. Goodwill online has better prices, and there's less competition during the auction, but they only offer a few photos and the listing details are sparse and mainly offer what the weight of the lot is.

If there are quilt shows in your area you can sometimes find vintage fabric for sale; my local guild sold huge bins of scrap fabric donated by their members at their show for very low prices. You can also find quilt tops and other unfinished projects or project kits for sale. One year I had the good luck to win two raffle baskets at the county show, which had lots of fabric, trims and notions in them, so don't forget to buy raffle tickets. :)

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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.

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...

Valerean

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