Thrift store scores: Fabric, Batting

Once upon a time I was a thrift store snob. I thought the stores smelled so bad I never wanted to set foot in them, let alone wear a strangers worn out clothes. The smell still makes me gag and feel like I need a shower, but a few years ago I smartened up and realized you can find some really nice stuff in there! At times I've found clothes with the tags still on from upscale retailers, score!

I don't make it out to thrift stores often enough, but when I do I usually find some at least one interesting piece of fabric I could use for quilting. A lot of the fabric from this quilt was thrifted. The salvation army near me has a rack dedicated to fabric, so I always check there first. Then I move onto the bed linens area and look for pillowcases and sheets. If I have extra time I'll check out the crafts section, and sometimes even scan some of the clothing itself. Mens dress shirts, womens skirts and kids clothing can sometimes turn up a treasure, but I try to be really picky in those areas. Well, I try to be really picky in general, because otherwise I would probably end up with a massive tower of sheets that would never get turned into quilts!

Yesterday this pillowcase caught my eye...

Not a show stopper, but the colors were saturated and paired with the right fabrics it could work. I thought the orange and yellow could be played up. Bonus, it felt like cotton, not a blend.

Then I found a huge yellow pillowcase with a vintage-y floral print, also cotton.  I also found a queen sized yellow sheet that will work great as a backing material.

When I get this stuff home, I wash it right away and "prep" it by cutting off all the seams. If it sits in my closet as a pillowcase or a sheet, or whatever it started out as, I won't want to sew with it later. 

I pulled some fabric out of my stash to see how it would look. I'm not sure brown and yellow alone would cut it for me, so I'm going to just tuck these finds into the stash and keep looking every so often at the thrift store for some potential matches.

Possible color scheme.. 

Another really neat find - this craft-sized batting package, brand new. The original price was pulled off, but I found it here on amazon for $16.99 - I bought it for $1.50. Hopefully I like it! Has anyone tried using a bamboo blend?

In other news, I finished a quilt top and am very close to finishing a second quilt top - OHMYGOSH. More on that next week!

Quilting on a budget

I love this scene in Bridesmaids. (If you haven't seen this movie, ya should!) Whenever I click lustfully around the fabric shops online I hear myself saying "Help me, I'm poor!" LOL! I'm not really poor. But if I'm not careful, this quilting hobby can get to be very expensive!

Let's think about this for a second! (Ew math! Ahh..) A 60"x60" quilt might use..

• 3 yards of fabric on the top @ $10.00/yard for designer beautiousness
• batting @ ... maybe $10 bucks if you're like me and just use warm n white with a Jo-Ann's coupon
• 3 yards of fabric on the back @ ??? Maybe you go cheaper on the back, let's just go with $5.00/ yard
• 1/2 yard for the binding... I'll go with $5.00/yard again
• thread...

That's $60. And yeah, this is just based on my experience and of course the numbers are different for every quilt. But it's pretty easy to spend big moolah on one single quilt. If you want to make a few quilts a month you are almost making a car payment. Okay I'll stop being annoying now. :)

This is what's been going through my mind when thinking about what my next quilt should be. I've recently bought some really pretty fabric that I can't decide what to do with. I can't cut into this stuff until I'm really, really sure I won't change my mind! But I'm still itching to quilt, and I don't have a huge fabric stash, so for now I've been working on cutting up the rest of the quilt top I showed you guys the other day that I bought for just a few dollars at an antique store. I bought it so long ago it's like quilting for free. :)

I've sorted the fabric into colors and found that there is a lot of red, and a lot of blue.

I really like the way the reds and blues look together, and since summer is quickly approaching my plan is to start a scrappy "picnic" quilt, you know, for BBQ's, naps, and of course, fourth of July fireworks! :) haha That sounds so nerdy.

Anyway, I think I'll cut each one into two rectangular pieces and chain them all together, then sew them into random rectangles sizes and then sew that up with some blocks of white. (Phew!) I really want to make it completely random and very modern. And cool.

I also ended up with a lot of browns. I'm going to save these colors and use them for inspiration in the fall.

This print made me think about a certain set of prints that I want, I really, really want...

Seriously, who doesn't already have flea market fancy or want it? Sigh... so pretty! I think the brown print above looks like it could be part of the fall bundle.

Some other prints I cut out of the the top...

And last but not least, the pile of rejects - yuck. Maybe I can use these somehow, but I'm really not sure. I'll save them just in case. :)

So anyhow, how do you guys afford the habit?