Saturday, June 4, 2011

Garage sale at a quilt shop

The beauty of scraps
In a town just north of me, the whole population holds a giant garage sale over the first weekend of June. This includes the quilt shop.
I received two e-mails from the shop about the sale.
After I got the second one, my firm resolve not to go dissolved. So I called my partner in fabric crimes, Sandra,  and off we went to experience a quilt store garage sale. We were sort of amazed and delighted -- in the way only the truly fabric addicted can be.
There was a pile of patchwork scraps piled high across four trestle tables. The deal was you could fill a Ziplock bag for $6.98 -- as long as it closed -- it was yours! If you neatly folded it all up (and I did), that was quite a lot of fabric.
I scored some Kona quilter's muslin, several charm squares, a nice piece of linen/cotton blend, and a huge piece of pink gingham. I also found several feet for my Brother machine, including a Teflon foot, a cording/piping foot and a roller foot. They were $1 each!
When I got it all home, I discovered there were some uneven edges on the gingham , so I squared it up and used torn off strips to make these little rosette gift ties, as featured in the current issue of Somerset Life.
These rosette things are popping up all over the place lately. They are decorating cushions, duvet covers, lampshades and tote bags. They are really simple to do. You basically twist up a strip of fabric, and start winding it into the flower shape, dotting with a glue gun along the way to hold the spiral together. In the magazine, they featured a permanent bridal bouquet in various colours of silk. It is pretty, arty and a clever way to make a lasting keepsake of a special day.
The rosettes I made have green raffia loopy leaves glued to the back, with hemp chord added for a tie.
These were fun and easy, and pretty darned affordable, since they started as quilt store garage sale scraps!
Sometimes you just gotta break out the glue gun

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like a wonderful shopping trip with lots of great bargains.
    Love your rosettes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pretty rosettes! Thank you for not pointing out that - as opposed to your neat fabric folding/inserting, I used the jam and shove method - it's quicker :D I'll be checking tomorrow to see what they may have left on sale - I'm wondering if they held back a certain amount of fun stuff (like those FEET!) for each day of the sale, and that when I get there, I'll find a smorgasbord of goodies that we didn't see last week! Oh yes - I'm also hoping to find the embroidery program for Pfaffy, LOL! I'll have a wing - or 3 - for you!! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh what fun! I can just imagine how much fabric you'd be able to get in a ziplock with careful folding. And all for $6.98. Even down here, where prices are a bit lower than in Canada that would be a great bargain.

    The pink gingham made a really pretty rosette.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for visiting Heaven is Handmaid! If you are having trouble making a comment, please feel free to e-mail me directly. You will find my e-mail address in my profile.
Have a handmade kind of day! :-)