Selling Fabric
 

My parents moved to an assisted living facility and had to downsize ALL my Mom's sewing fabric & notions.

We are planning a rummage sale and I am thinking about selling the fabric by the pound. Any suggestions how much per pound you would charge? I was thinking about $2/pound or how would you suggest selling it?
I just hate to have to mark each piece. I would like this as simple as possible.

Thanks in Advance

Mary

You might try making several tables (or piles or baskets) with smaller cuts for say $2 each, and larger cuts (perhaps 2yards-4yards at $6-8 each) and then full yardage pieces of 5yards or more for $12-15 and just post signs above. You can always take a quick measure to keep everyone honest!

I would contact any local quilt guilds and give them an opportunity to do a preview sale the day or so before, you might just not have to fool with any of it when they finish!

I think quilting cotton weighs about 6 oz/yard, which would be just over 2.5 yards per pound. $2/pound would be a very good price (for the buyer) for good fabric, so it's probably about right for a rummage sale. I've heard of others selling fabric by the pound and think that's a good way to go.

Fabric by the pound is the way to go. Have been to a couple of sales where that was well received. :) The seller sold out. Have a good scale handy.

There was a "scrubs" store in the area that used to sell their scraps by the pound. They priced it by the size of the scraps and the largest were $2.00 a pound and that was about 6 years ago. They had more people than they could handle. Not sure why they stopped - probably moved the sewing part down to Mexico. But they sure did a booming business when they did it.

My friend in Oregon is selling on Craig's list and been getting $5 a yard for her better fabrics (bundle into 10 yards). You might want to sort the really good fabrics from the so so fabric.

fill a bag for $5

Depends on where your Mom bought her fabric. If she bought it at Joann's or Hancocks or some such, $1.50-$2 a pound should be fine. However, if she bought a lot of fabric from quilt shops, you will want to separate that out and mark it separately. It's a much higher quality of fabric.

I made the mistake of selling my quilting items at an auction my husband was having when we moved. He had a lot of large heavy equipment and guy stuff. I did send post cards to quilt guilds. Needless to say, the auctioneer had no idea about quilting. Would have been much better to have a sale of my own. And much more fun, too. Lesson learned.

You can also consider selling by the plastic grocery sacks. $10 a sack is a normal price. Or you can sell $2/pc under 5 yds and say $8-10/pc over 5 yds. All is still a fair price and less hassle for you.

How did you plan to do the $2/lb? Were you gonna guesstimate or weigh?