Materials for Altered Stuffies

To makeover my thrifted stuffies for Halloween I needed some supplies, but since our local Jo-Ann has closed all that's left in my area is Hobby Lobby, where I absolutely refuse to shop (see this article at The MarySue if you'd like to know my reasons.) Since I had another excuse, off I cheerfully went thrifting!

I found a lovely little pumpkin for my collection at our local church thrift for .99, and a bag of wee faux gourds and berries in autumn colors for $1.00.

A trip to Dollar Tree surprised me when I found two skeins of chenille yarn, some metallic pipe cleaners and three fat quarters of fabric in Halloween colors that I needed. Not a bad haul for $7.50.

I purchased five adorable Halloween novelty prints from an eBay textile seller. These were $13.00, but that's pretty much the only way I can get small amounts of holiday fabric now (plus I got free shipping.)

Sorting my scrap bin earlier this summer made it easy to pull some Halloween and fall fabric remnants for my project. I even found the bag of scraps I saved from last year's Halloween tote. I think I'm ready to start altering. :)

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Goodwill Gamble #2 Arrives

My second Goodwill gamble arrived; this is one I paid ten bucks for last month. Just inside the lid was a big roll of plastic mesh that I think is for latchhook work. In the auction listing it looked like fabric to me, so that was unexpected. Someone at the seller's end was nice enough to put a note on this pinned fabric. I'll put on my gloves before I take it out to inspect it. The embroidered green fabric turned out to be 1-1/2 yards of sequinned and three-dimensional designer fabric. I'll guess this cost somewhere between $20.00 to $30.00 a yard, and it's in pristine condition. But here's a shot of everything in the lot, which is mostly crafty odds and ends with a small amount of cotton fabrics, a large amount of synethetic fabrics, and some other surprises. The original owner of these was probably a Catholic school teacher; these beads, crosses and medallions are the kind of rosary kits for kids to make at Sunday school or Bible camp (and s...

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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.

Valerean

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