Ok, so for months I have been reading all the posts where you ladies and gents find great bargains on fabric. While I rejoiced with you I must admit that I was a bit -- shall we say envious. I have found a few pieces of good fabric at the local Goodwill but nothing to write home about. Today I went to check out the price of chicken feed. (DD wanted to know - not the we have or ever will have chickens; it's just when you are 42 yrs old you ask your momma these kinds of questions.) After leaving the only feed store in town we saw a thrift store that had just opened.
Well it was the typical thrift place -- lots of clothes and dishes. I had to use the bathroom really really badly, so begged to use theirs. As I was coming out I looked down. There were not one, not two, but four 32 gal Rubbermaid plastic bins full of little baggies of cotton fabric. Each was marked $3.00. DD and I sorted through each bin and picked out $24 dollars worth of baggies, paid, and left the store.
We hadn't gone more than three blocks when I turned the car around (lucky I was driving 'cause she would not have turned around.) I went in and told the lady that I wanted more baggies. Rather sheepishly she said that if I would please take all of that "stuff" she would throw in the bins and only charge me $100. You have never seen anyone flash a credit card so quickly in your life. The back of my Forester was so full of fabric that I was afraid we would be going home on the rear tires only.
The end results was over $200 worth of baggies each filled with 100% cotton quilt fabric from sizes 1/3 yard to three yards each. (I tried to estimate the total yardage and stopped counting at 375 yards.) No two fabrics are the same. A quilt store in a nearby town closed and they had donated what was left to this new thrift store and the workers there were tired of tripping on the bins and had no idea how to display it so they just wanted it gone.
I wanted to dump it all in the living room floor and lay in it so I could wiggle around like puppies do in the grass I was so happy. DD said no to that idea. Just as well; I need to get sewing now.