Thrift Shop Find: Fabric Treasure Trove

I debated today. Do I stay in and just stitch or paint or spin or do I go out and at the very least, stop at one thrift shop? I had to go to the bank, and one of my favorite second hand shops is nearly across the street...so, I went. And am I ever happy I did.  Not only did I find remnants, curtains and old linens that will work beautifully in my spinning...

I also found this zippered plastic bag full of what I *thought* was pre-cut quilt squares. Packed full, $1.00 the ticket price. I'm thinking a buck. Even if I don't use the fabric, I can use the bag! Imagine my surprise when I get it home and I dump it on my craft*cough*dining room*cough* table and discover that it was not pre-cut squares for quiliting. No, it appears that these squares, varying from 1" to 6"x6" samples, were part of some fabric sample book. A few still had stickers on them, others did not. And they range from cottons to tweeds to silks, some quilted, some satins, each different than the last and I am just over the top giddy!

If I manage to get the lot sorted tonight, the creating begins tomorrow. Have some ideas already tumbling around in my head. Layers and stitches and tearing, oh my!

Creative 365: Day 75 Painting and Thrift Shoppin'

Before going to the hospital to visit my little sister who is having gall bladder and pancreas problems (and I might add was quite loopy when I did get there, lovin' the pain killers!) I spent some time painting. I was working on a fat quarter of cotton in olive, chocolate and real red.

I am inspired by many artists, but have been looking a lot recently at the work of Antoni Tapies and it is his work that got me started on this piece.

I made stops at two of our thrift shops today too, and found books and handkerchiefs and more yarn for more things that I will one day get around to doing!  The books I found had some interesting things I would like to explore further. Egyptian art in needlework, Needleweaving, Stuffed animals, yarn animals.

But for now, time to stitch!

Thrift Storin'

So I go take the Thrift Shop Tour today, my mission? To find interesting containers for the portion of our herb and veggie garden that we plant in pots left on the deck. Well, I found a few, but what I did not expect to find (as they've been really rare lately) was the mother-load of buttons. Vintage, plastic, glass, pearl...broken, some obviously newer, some that still had wonderful old thread through the holes.

The Whole Lot!

Some of the more interesting picks of the litter

I also found an 25 year old book on beginning weaving. (You know, just in case I decide to pick that art up too.) There were a few almost new tubes of water color paints as well that made it into my checkout basket!

blizzard stitching & thrift store treasures

Blizzard Stitching progress on Cecelia & Clive

I am so glad I made my trip to the thrift stores earlier in the week as today would have been impossible! I am looking out the window now and cannot see the neighbor's house. I shoveled once this morning already, but am giving up now until it is over with! Yes, we are in the midst of a snowstorm.

What that does mean, however, is that I have had a lot of time to stitch, and now that I have no plans to leave the house, I hope to finish the new design which I have decided to title "Cecilia & Clive".

I am working with DMC floss, Weeks Dye Works and Kreinik blending filaments with this design.

When I did make the thrift store rounds, I found this interesting worn out but oh so beautiful tapestry-like wall hanging.  It is just perfect above my china hutch. I find the rips and thread bare spots charming!

Now back to stitching...well...after I make another pot of coffee and dare to peek outside one more time!

wednesday thift store treasures

My New Quilt!

Today I made my regular Hump Day Hop Around to the thrift stores, and after a good deal of digging around, I was not finding anything that was poking me, saying, 'you can't  live without me, you know it!'  I was just about the leave the last shop, and was walking through the aisle where all the quilts and blankets were hung. The first time I went through them, I completely missed it, but the second time? 

There are a few small tears in the backing that were easily repaired. 

It is a queen sized bed spread, there is no batting in between the quilt top and the backing, and it is tied off with yarn at the corners of the blocks which are all these amazing large scale botanicals and bohemian-ish prints. It is just amazing and it works just perfectly in my bedroom.  The squares are a little heavier than traditional quilting cottons and they worn out in places and faded, other pieces still vibrant. Best part? $4.00. 

I also nabbed a few sweaters that look to be good candidates for yarn recycling, and a hand full of vintage handkerchiefs that were in fairly good shape. While I did not find a lot of goodies today, this quilt just tickles me! It certainly brightened up my winter!

thrift store goodies

I finally got caught up on printing and getting orders out, and had a bit of time to make long overdue stops at the thrift stores. It is usually all or nothing lately. I either come home empty-handed or with a bag full of unusual goodies. Today was one of those fun days when the cashiers looked at me like...'what in the hoolies are you going to do with that?' 

This little fabric covered book caught my eye first. I picked it up, opened it, and imagine my surprise when inside, I found something unexpected!

Two vintage handkerchiefs were secured inside by criss-crossing satin ribbons. I do not know if this was how it was supposed to be, or if it had been made as a book for handkerchiefs, as I have never seen anything like it before, but it was so interesting that I simply had to put it in my basket.

Inside the little cloth book

I am also a collector of old thread, wooden spools with ratty wrappers and labels, tangled up and worn out, so old that their purpose now is find themselves lined up on the window sill of the studio. 

These are a few of the spools I found in a shoebox at the Salvation Army.  There were probably 25 total, a wide variety of colors, some tangled up pretty good, but what fun!

And finally, these little doo-dads.

I think they are sample swatches of a woven canvas for interior design. They are the perfect size to fold in half, and I envision them embellished and stitched to fashion fun little coin purses or something such.

There are a total of 8, and as soon as I picked them up, I saw what I was going to try and do with them.

Yep, a good thrift store day.

new blooms

Here are some of the new blooms I have been working on and listed on Etsy this afternoon.

The red flowers are made from recycled wool that I took from a jacket and felted. Each is centered with a found button from my collection.

The purple flowers I crocheted with this fun pompom yarn I picked up while shopping with my niece. I centered these with a bunch of different beads, again from my stash. Some recycled from broken jewelry, others I picked up here and there over the years.

The blue blooms, again, recycled wool, this time from a sweater. I cut the flowers, felted them, and then stitched two layers together and centered this group with a metallic-finish button. 

I went today to try and find more goodies at the thrift stores to recycle, up-cycle, de-construct, reconstruct, and all that jazz, but only found a few skeins of yarn to rescue, a handful of silk ties and one small wool sweater that is really iffy in the color department. The blooms might come off really primitive with that one, unless they felt differently then I expect them to! 

Getting ready for another blizzard blast! 

Lots of time to play and create!

Waiting for the washing machine to finish its cycle. Inside, one crocheted wool hat spinning round and round. An experiment with felting that I cannot wait to see the results of.  I used the wool yarn that I recycled from a sweater I found and unravelled a few weeks ago.

I had not picked up a crochet hook in quite some time. My daughter and niece both crochet, and this morning when I was heading out to make my weekly thrift store run, they asked me to try and find them some yarn so they could crochet this afternoon.  I knew I would most likely do some crocheting of my own with all the yarn I have been "harvesting" from sweaters, but watching them today gave me the itch to start now. 

Other treasures found today: buttons, some of them pearl with thread still in them, vintage handkerchiefs, a shoebox of cotton quilt squares, and a few balls of chunky yarn that I kept for myself! (Although as often as my daughter robs my stash, that yarn might just walk off one day soon!)

Felting

I finished felting the sweaters that I picked up at the Thrift Shop over the weekend.  It was an adventure for me, as I had never attempted any felting before. I am happy with most of my results, although the purple that I had really hoped would work just never quite turned out how I had hoped it would. The angora content, I think, was too high. All it ended up doing was getting really strung out and clumpy.

The reds turned out the nicest. They were 100% wool. The blue was almost all wool with a small percentage of angora in it. It felted nicely too but has a has some texture to it. The grey really has some texture to it. There was no tag in it so the exact fiber content. I like the feel of it. There isn't very much of it as the sweater was an extra small to begin with, and so it reeeeally shrunk up, but it has an interesting effect.

Thrift Store Finds

I have been wanting to try my hand at felting for some time now, that and recycling yarn by unravelling sweaters.  Today I went to a couple of the many thrift stores we are blessed to have in town, and while I did not find any sweaters I thought would be good candidates for unravelling, I did come across five wool sweaters, AND it was half-price day so I got all four of them for $12.00!

There are two red sweaters, one gorgeous grape,  a tweedy brown-grey, and a heather blue. 

Tomorrow, I felt!