Iceblossom

I've been a thrifty quilter for a long time, for me that's part of the attraction. Sure... I'd love to be able to pay for a class and buy a couple hundred dollars worth of exactly the fabric I want at a time, but that's just not my reality.

I'm really lucky that I live in the relatively wealthy Seattle area and I have lots of time available to me. Most of the fabric I buy is through luck at the thrift stores, letting other people pay the high prices. The problem is that you have to be open to what is there and you have to go regularly, but I've bought every brand name possible (from Makower to Hoffman to South Seas), most in yardage, sometimes I take a risk on a bag of scraps and find treasures within. For me part of the thrill of design is that I only have a whatever size piece of what I want to use, so how to use it to its best effect.

My two recent best buys (both since August) is a hand pieced grandmother's flower garden top from the Goodwill, the hexes finish 3/4" a side. The thing is huge, really about king sized and I think just got too big for the original maker to handle. It was only $6.00. The other buy is a very nice crib sized top I got for $2.00 at St Vincent's. It was pieced in large pieces, not a style I would do using some Suzy's Zoo (by Hoffman) cute as heck duck fabric and some obviously high quality tone on tone light colors. Even though it's not my style, someone will love it and I can do a nice quilting job on it. The original maker had pinned it together with a much-too-thick double thick batting and a piece of flannel that did not go well with the top and was really too narrow as well as being an inch or two short. I am saving the batting for a different project as I will be quilting this down on a long arm. One of the ladies at my Tuesday small group makes premie blankets and part of their rules is to use flannel on the back, so she gladly grabbed the flannel -- all in all, 3 quilts is a pretty good deal for $2.00.

For those of us that like vintage fabric or don't really mind working with those peach and soft tones of the early 80s, or the posies of the late 60s/70s, estate sales are a great place to find fabric. Sadly, often the families toss out the scrap bags thinking no one would want them -- but if you see an ad and there is a sewing machine listed and a contact number, check if they also have fabric. I've often had bags given to me for the asking, true -- a lot of it was not quilting suitable but I would go through and throw out the trash and give the leftovers to the goodwill, or for awhile I had a lady friend that made rag rugs out of the doubleknit polyester.

I had collected several hundred yards of vintage fabrics that I always meant to sell via ebay, but I never did. My original ebay handle of "Fabstasher" got hacked and I closed it down, but I loved the name. If it was 36" wide I pretty much bought everything I could find for a couple of decades. I did find a local person who was glad to buy (at wholesale prices) my boxes of vintage as I reduced my stash. She now makes a tidy little profit on them selling them at quilt shows. I have to admit that I still can't resist the true vintage but I'm just not seeing much of it any more.