The Mother of All Garage Sales

It's been another big week for sewing and sewing machines. The event of the year, one I actually wait for all year long took place on Saturday: the Textile Center Garage Sale! This is that huge gathering of crafters who want to see how cheaply they can buy their supplies. Donations are accepted on Thursday and Friday with a whole crew of volunteers who sort and price all of these lovely donations. Last year I volunteered to sign in other volunteers but this year I got a bit braver and volunteered to sort and price fabric. Big laundry carts were rolled in and were full of bags of fabric. About half were labeled but so much needed to be wrapped with tape and priced. It was fun to sort all the different types of fabric but most decisions needed to be made quickly. We were allowed to purchase at the end of our shift but it needed to be priced by someone else just to keep things fair. I bought $10 worth on that day and then headed back on Saturday for the big day.

My daughter Kelly always comes with me and this year my husband wanted to come, too, since he's interested in jewelry making. There were some beads and books about jewelry making but that was a very small part of the sale area. As I made my way down the nearly impassible aisles to the fabric I could see how much larger the piles on the table were then they were two days ago. You really could not begin to see it all but we tried anyway. Kelly was such a good helper as we each held up pieces and said "dress?" or "kitchen?" with yea or nah. So much of the fabric was priced at $1 that when I went to pay I could see I only bought $1 or $2 rolls or bundles. Here's my new stash after I got home:

That's $16 in fabrics, missing the Thursday haul

Then it was on to the patterns, books, and magazines. I didn't have time to check out the magazines since I was going to focus on little girl dress patterns. Kelly found some dress patterns in my size that I approved of but in the end I bought 13 patterns for girls and four for myself. Here's the kicker:  they are 10 cents each but they only deal with whole dollars so my 17 patterns were $2. Ah! I was short three patterns! Never fear, Kelly was over by three so I took her extra. That's right, all this messing around for 30 cents! I also found some of those great vintage sewing books: Singer Sewing circa 1949 and 1969. They are just wonderful and for only $1 each they were going home with me:

That's a lot of reading to do!

Last night I checked each pattern for contents and all but four were unused, never opened. That means someone had high hopes of making something but just didn't quite get as far as even opening the pattern up.  Well, I've had a few like that, too.

My grand total for the volunteer day of shopping and again on Saturday was $30 and I've got some great stuff to replenish what I've sewn up. We couldn't stay for the silent auction of the sewing machines but I did get to look at them and left only an hour or so after we got there since we had afternoon commitments. They have a big bag sale the last hour that is a mad rush but not this year for us. There's always next year...and I can dream about it until then.