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| Nice freebies from Mom's old sewing stash... |
Every bobbin that she had still had thread wound around it, but when I popped down into the bottom section of her kit, I hit a minor jackpot with what I uncovered.
Among at least ten metal zippers (and we all know how much those cost these days) were the almost new items shown above: a pack of four bobbins, three thimbles (I had been wanting a thimble after some painful moments hand-sewing some tough "stuff"), and a set of eyelets/grommets with setting tool.
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| Pricing from the 1970s... |
And with that big spool of white thread, I'm now set in terms of having enough black and white thread for a long time now, having recently picked up a big serger spool of black thread.
Not normally a place where I would either look for or think of finding bargains, I was at Michaels to get some artificial blooms that were on sale and happened to stumble upon a clearance bin of ribbons. Priced at a buck each, I found these two that I liked; the colours are pink and taupe and light grey and taupe (do they look familiar?), along with some great silver and black cord for $1.49.
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| Some not bad looking ribbon and cord for a total of $3.49! |
I also purchased this great little organizer box at Dollarama earlier this year, for only $2. (It was actually so great that my other half bought one too: for his fishing stuff.) Here it is filled with some of my sewing goodies. (The blue separators are removable.)
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| Small parts storage box from Dollarama... |
What makes it great is that it has three snap closures along the sides to ensure that the box won't pop open accidentally. Definitely would not like to have the contents of this go scattering all over the place! Speaking of potential contents, I also made a few eBay purchases that were more or less successful: a set of ten twist lock sets for $4.75 (as shown on my wallet), a set of fifty eyelets/grommets for $3.99 (although they were smaller than I anticipated), and a set of fifty snap fasteners for $2.82.
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| Two bucks well spent! |
And yet another plus — this fits right into the front base of my Robert Kaufman themed organizer that I made a while back.
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| I finally decided to use this multi-zip organizer for its intended purpose... |
As I've mentioned several times in the past, dollar stores are great places to browse for deals. Little organizers like this typically sell for three or four times the price elsewhere.
And speaking of organizers, during one of my trips to IKEA, I grabbed this set of boxes (from their SKUBB line) for $9.99 ($7.99 in the US).
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| image courtesy of IKEA.com... |
The two small ones are doing duty in one of my dresser drawers, the two intermediate ones are keeping my ziplock bags of sewing supplies organized, and the two large ones are holding small bolts of fabric and my scrap pieces as shown below.
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| This box of scraps sits on the floor beside my sewing table... |
What's neat about these boxes is that they are collapsible. There is a diagonal zipper along the base that "releases" them. It was actually my plan when I bought them to come up with a pattern to make one. ;-)
About a month ago, we had a garage sale event in the neighbourhood. A neighbour had been given someone's stash of fabric to sell since the owner was getting on in years and didn't see any possibility that she was going to make use of it. (That's a lesson for all you fabric hoarders out there!) The neighbours had no idea what fabric should actually sell for, so apparently some early shoppers came away with HUGE bargains with pieces priced at 25¢! A business-minded soul alerted them to the fact that the fabric was priced way too cheaply so it was later hiked up by 300%. I'm sure the best selections were gone by the time I went over there at the end of the day, but I did end up taking these two...
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| I got at least two yards of each of these fabrics for a dollar apiece... |
The black is a heavy cotton twill that — while it seems to attract all sorts of lint — is a colour that I like to use as a contrast and having it means that I don't have to sacrifice any more pairs of black pants to my sewing projects! I'm actually thinking of making a skirt out of the white cotton.
Finally — though not part of my sewing stash, per se — for those who are struggling with changing eyesight (isn't that just a royal pain?), here is a terrific magnifying lamp that I picked up for $25, which turned out to be a great price considering what I've seen online since.
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| Those are a couple of the metal zippers that I found in Mom's sewing kit... |
The top part of the lamp articulates almost all the way around, the weighted base keeps it upright no matter what odd position the top is in and the light — when needed — is powered by a sharp circular LED bulb.
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| A flexible and handy helper for the sewing room! |
I don't do as much maintenance on my sewing machine as perhaps I should, but when I do, this lamp sure comes in handy!
Before I close, I'd like to wish a Happy Independence Day to my US readers... can't believe we have already spun half the year off the calendar!
By the way, as a bit of a personal aside, I don't know how other bloggers go about this, but I generally have my posts written up well in advance of their posting dates. This has turned out to be a good thing, since I really had no time in June to spare. Hubby and I were away for about a week as the month rolled in; then, upon arriving back home, I formally (crazily?) agreed to GO BACK TO WORK — on a very part-time basis — as a tech writer for a large energy firm. I then had to tell them I was off on a holiday until the end of the month...! (We were out east in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island for about ten days, enjoying copious amounts of seafood.) Now that I'm back, I'm going to have to start being even more organized about this whole blogging process as I juggle some work hours in between.
Just as summer begins!
Maybe I am crazy...?
Rochelle I come across a lot of the same old notions at garage sales and from friends from time-to-time. I love those old notions and use them too. I have also inherited a lot of fabric, over the years from friends, the free table at the groups I go to and recently from one friend who was cleaning and organizing and another who had passed away and her husband gave to me to share with the groups she belonged to. So I am pretty well set for life with fabrics!
ReplyDeleteAs for your blogging question, sometimes I do write my posts in advance and schedule them and sometimes I write and post right away. I haven't felt like writing blog posts lately, partly due to stressing my right forearm, as it hurts to type, mouse and to do some sewing. This is taking a lot time to write this comment. So I probably will give my arm a rest and not do too much computer work until the pain is gone. I certainly hope the pain will go away and I didn't do anything permanent!