Shopping The Thrifts For Quilting Fabrics
12-21-2025, 11:12 AM
#1
Super Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Mendocino Coast, CA
Posts: 5,658
Shopping The Thrifts For Quilting Fabrics
I've always loved going to the thrift stores, hunting for anything and everything. Alas, most of our local thrift stores and fabric shops have recently closed. However, I'm starting to find some good stuff in the online thrift stores s/a shopgoodwill.com. The things that I find are not always in the form of yardage, but often in the form of cotton shirts, dresses, tablecloths, etc. You do have to pay shipping and sometimes a handling fee, but with prices these days, the gas saved alone is worth it. Plus, you'll find some great vintage fabrics.
12-21-2025, 08:05 PM
#4
Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2021
Location: British Columbia
Posts: 926
Thrifting fabric is always a gamble for me but I do sometimes find a treasure or two although they have been harder to come by lately as the prices have gone up in the thrift stores as well as everywhere else. A couple of our local stores do have "sales" or mark down prices by a percentage every week or so, but it's not unusual to see men's shirts for $15-$20 so it's not really a great money saver unless a good shirt makes it past week 3 or 4.
A couple of my local stores have dedicated crafty sections that can be quite decently stocked (depending on what has come in, obviously) but most of the fabrics are now being priced around $8-$10/yd (not always yardage) which is pushing it for me, especially as I can't be sure how clean/smell-free it is when it's wrapped in plastic. Some years ago (a year or so into Covid?) it became apparent that that one of the stores had someone's stash (or someone who kept donating from their stash) in their crafty corner. I bought quite a few ziploc bags over the course of about a year and found a lot of the same fabrics kept cropping up - once in a bag of HSTs, once in a collection of narrow strips rolled up like jelly rolls and then some appeared again months later in a bag of random offcuts. Some of those fabrics ended up being the inspiration and foundation for a couple of my favourite scrappy quilts. :-)
Sadly, the quantity and quality of those grab bags has become a bit unpredictable and I've been disappointed to find badly stained or damaged fabrics, and once a chunk of seersucker fabric that made up most of the bag marked "quilting cotton." It may have been cotton but it wasn't very useful to me and there are times when I have wished I had spent my money on fabric that I actually wanted and could use...
I will still keep looking in the thrift stores but I have learned to be a bit more careful about what I buy. :-)
A couple of my local stores have dedicated crafty sections that can be quite decently stocked (depending on what has come in, obviously) but most of the fabrics are now being priced around $8-$10/yd (not always yardage) which is pushing it for me, especially as I can't be sure how clean/smell-free it is when it's wrapped in plastic. Some years ago (a year or so into Covid?) it became apparent that that one of the stores had someone's stash (or someone who kept donating from their stash) in their crafty corner. I bought quite a few ziploc bags over the course of about a year and found a lot of the same fabrics kept cropping up - once in a bag of HSTs, once in a collection of narrow strips rolled up like jelly rolls and then some appeared again months later in a bag of random offcuts. Some of those fabrics ended up being the inspiration and foundation for a couple of my favourite scrappy quilts. :-)
Sadly, the quantity and quality of those grab bags has become a bit unpredictable and I've been disappointed to find badly stained or damaged fabrics, and once a chunk of seersucker fabric that made up most of the bag marked "quilting cotton." It may have been cotton but it wasn't very useful to me and there are times when I have wished I had spent my money on fabric that I actually wanted and could use...
I will still keep looking in the thrift stores but I have learned to be a bit more careful about what I buy. :-)
12-22-2025, 02:48 AM
#5
Super Member
Join Date: Aug 2018
Location: Peoria, IL -- Midwest Transplant
Posts: 7,260
I spent probably my last 20 years primarily collecting and using fabric from thrift stores and estate sales. Being in the Seattle area, there were craft sections where I could buy bags of small pieces of fabric, individual large pieces, and sometimes even bolts. Originally I was just looking for 36" wide vintage fabric but so much lovely and much more recent fabric would tempt me. Also look in the linens for party aprons often made (and never or rarely used) with full widths of 36" vintage fabric, for UFOs or other lovely items of linen, damask, cotton and embroidery.
Sure, I couldn't go out and find exactly what I wanted, when I wanted it, and in the yardage needed but I was able to find quality fabrics by every designer/brand. You name it, I've gotten it with a thrift store tag on it! Hand dyes to batiks, Balson Erlanger to Makower UK, lots of 80s era Cranston VIP... You learn how to burn test fabric to determine content -- if you aren't sure it's probably rayon/blend and I have decided I am ok to use if I can't tell. Wool and silk smell, polys edges turn hard and sometimes burn fast and hot (not suitable for children's pajamas!) or sometimes cast an oily smoke. I usually don't use what I call the "quality" blends, but lots of broadcloth or similar good for garments that is 10-20% poly and mostly cotton.
When we traveled we would stop by large thrift shops, usually Goodwill, an we still found things. Here in Central Illinois we still stop in small towns and I still quite often find things. I know if I still took scraps/small pieces I found a large bag of batik scraps I would have been very happy to work with, but I don't want to deal with the storage of the scraps.
In the Seattle area (and most large urban areas) they get so much stuff donated they can't keep it all. All the stores had some sort of dating tag and things were only kept for a month and then they had to get trashed/further recycled. In Seattle on Thursdays the prices would start their first drop, and us "pro" shoppers went out and got the things we were most interested in. Over the weekend the prices would drop more and then typically on Sunday (if they were open) or Monday, anything left a month old was $0.99... furniture, sewing machines, shirts, etc. Thursday was my day, I would head out in the morning with $20 and usually home within 2-4 hours (and up to 6-8 stores) and mostly I came back with some good stuff, other times I came back with my money intact but that was less often.
Yes, some people "donate" their garbage. You'd be amazed by the amount of stuff that doesn't even get to the sales floor. The bag of Hand Dyed fabrics I snatched up were not "fixed" that is, the dye ran like thieves in the night... But my car was in the shop and I had a Bonnie Hunter project to do, so instead of just putting that bag in the "textile recycle" (at the garbage transfer site, is what you did with old pillows and such) I ended up doing a bunch of boiling fabric and laundry.
You do have to control yourself when you look at the value of things... can be real easy to suddenly you have 5 very nice blenders or whatever and slide off the list from thrifter to hoarder. I had a list, top of the list was Fabric (preferably vintage, also quilting), then my Dishes (Yorktowne by Pfaltzgraff), then I had a list of picture frame sizes I was maybe looking for (hint: never pay full price for a picture frame ever again!), Vinyl albums I was looking for (I had a lot of friendly competition among the vinyl collectors and could direct someone to a store currently with the old 78s. Never did find my holy grail -- Weird Al, Peter and the Wolf in vinyl, but I've found a lot of amazing stuff.
Sure, I couldn't go out and find exactly what I wanted, when I wanted it, and in the yardage needed but I was able to find quality fabrics by every designer/brand. You name it, I've gotten it with a thrift store tag on it! Hand dyes to batiks, Balson Erlanger to Makower UK, lots of 80s era Cranston VIP... You learn how to burn test fabric to determine content -- if you aren't sure it's probably rayon/blend and I have decided I am ok to use if I can't tell. Wool and silk smell, polys edges turn hard and sometimes burn fast and hot (not suitable for children's pajamas!) or sometimes cast an oily smoke. I usually don't use what I call the "quality" blends, but lots of broadcloth or similar good for garments that is 10-20% poly and mostly cotton.
When we traveled we would stop by large thrift shops, usually Goodwill, an we still found things. Here in Central Illinois we still stop in small towns and I still quite often find things. I know if I still took scraps/small pieces I found a large bag of batik scraps I would have been very happy to work with, but I don't want to deal with the storage of the scraps.
In the Seattle area (and most large urban areas) they get so much stuff donated they can't keep it all. All the stores had some sort of dating tag and things were only kept for a month and then they had to get trashed/further recycled. In Seattle on Thursdays the prices would start their first drop, and us "pro" shoppers went out and got the things we were most interested in. Over the weekend the prices would drop more and then typically on Sunday (if they were open) or Monday, anything left a month old was $0.99... furniture, sewing machines, shirts, etc. Thursday was my day, I would head out in the morning with $20 and usually home within 2-4 hours (and up to 6-8 stores) and mostly I came back with some good stuff, other times I came back with my money intact but that was less often.
Yes, some people "donate" their garbage. You'd be amazed by the amount of stuff that doesn't even get to the sales floor. The bag of Hand Dyed fabrics I snatched up were not "fixed" that is, the dye ran like thieves in the night... But my car was in the shop and I had a Bonnie Hunter project to do, so instead of just putting that bag in the "textile recycle" (at the garbage transfer site, is what you did with old pillows and such) I ended up doing a bunch of boiling fabric and laundry.
You do have to control yourself when you look at the value of things... can be real easy to suddenly you have 5 very nice blenders or whatever and slide off the list from thrifter to hoarder. I had a list, top of the list was Fabric (preferably vintage, also quilting), then my Dishes (Yorktowne by Pfaltzgraff), then I had a list of picture frame sizes I was maybe looking for (hint: never pay full price for a picture frame ever again!), Vinyl albums I was looking for (I had a lot of friendly competition among the vinyl collectors and could direct someone to a store currently with the old 78s. Never did find my holy grail -- Weird Al, Peter and the Wolf in vinyl, but I've found a lot of amazing stuff.
12-22-2025, 08:59 AM
#7
Super Member
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Florida
Posts: 6,132
I'm hooked on looking for linen in thrift stores. Probably easier to find down here in the South but still fun. I've made several linen quilts from men's shirts and weirdly women's capris. I watch Catbird Quilts on youtube. She has some great advice. I have even found a linen shower curtain. I pay up to $7 for a man's shirt and don't go smaller than an XL.
12-22-2025, 09:16 AM
#8
Junior Member
Join Date: Jul 2024
Posts: 215
I find that older fabric tends to tear/rip easily, like old thread. Not being able to hold up under any kind of strain of pulling or tugging either in use or during washing. I'm of the school of staying away from it for making quilts.
