Thursday Threads

Textile crafts have always been my favorite way to have fun and be creative. I've tried paper crafts, painting crafts, glue, wood, and other types of creativity, but I always come back to textiles.

I taught myself how to knit socks this year and yesterday I completed my second pair. I'm not perfect yet, but I'm feeling more confident. I have more yarns to keep going for quite a while and am excited to know I can have what I want and need more than what manufacturers think I need. I also started a pair of mittens and they are still a work in progress, but with a couple more hours of time I will have them finished. It feels great to be using the yarns that have been sitting and waiting to be made into the projects intended. 

My daughter made this up cycled tote bag from her collection of vintage bed sheets. She uses a lot of the reclaimed linens for projects like this. She added a doily and made ribbon and yo yo flowers to embellish it.

She also finished this large granny square afghan this week. I love the aqua and white. This may be donated to a hospital charity. That's what's been keeping us busy here at the "Craft Zone" these past couple of weeks in our spare time. I can't even begin to tell you the ideas that float around in our heads and wonder if there will ever be time to do all that we would love to do.

Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend.

A little bit of everything this week.

The thrift finds this week were small. Mostly because we didn't get out to do much. We spent time with family, got the taxes filed, went out to lunch and have just been doing what needs to be done around the apartment. 

I spent some time choosing the fabrics for my next quilt. The oriental print has been my favorite for a long time. It is bed linen fabric that I will up cycle and mix with the solids. Most of the fabrics have been thrift finds and some are just leftover remnants from other projects. I know it's bright, but color inspires me. 

Thrift finds this weekend include a vintage Hollie Hobbie bed sheet, a yellow and orange floral pillow case and a beautiful gray and pink art deco style vintage pitcher. 

It was a work and play weekend and I think we needed to relax a bit. Relaxing to me is sewing and with St. Patrick's day coming I had to make something. That something was an apron. I know it won't make the corned beef and cabbage taste any better, but it will make the cooking fun.

We have so many items that we need to list on line that I think we may take a couple weeks off from hunting and just work with what's here. It's been wonderful building the stores and getting it all organized as far as storing it. Lots of research to be done to make sure we know what we're listing and continuing to grow. I hope everyone has a wonderful week and thanks for stopping by. 

Thrift Gift of Fabrics

Thrift shopping was put on hold this past week because of one of those events that happen in life, so these are last weeks finds, but Wow! What a time we are having. Got out a bit while the sun was shining and found linens, which are our favorite things to find, along with a few other items. 

Just so excited about these curtains and pillow shams. I have already reclaimed the lace and salvaged the pleats on the drapes to up cycle. Envisioning a few projects with the remaining fabric.

This is just a few of the sheets we found. We are so addicted to fabric and sewing.

Imagine the thrill of finding NIP vintage sheets. The trip was getting better every minute.

Then there were napkins, a Vera scarf and an embroidered linen just right for a pocket on my up cycled robe. Got to have a pocket.

My favorite fabric find is the beautiful piece of vintage pink floral fabric. Almost silk like, but so Hollywood. I remember fabric of this kind made into wonderful bed covers. The vintage Vera scarf is a poppy pattern and then there's the lovely bowl with it's cover.  A couple of years ago I found four pear shaped dishes that are part of a Lazy Susan set. They were so nice that I couldn't leave them behind because I felt that some one could use them as serving dishes. Who would have thought that a couple years later I'd find the center bowl that matches them, in a totally different place on earth and in excellent condition. I can't wait to put them together, but now the challenge will be to find the wooden base to put it on. Not impossible. I just need to put it out on the radar and it will come.

I just had to show everyone how beautiful this is. Imaging finding the pieces years and miles apart. Currently listed on butterflyplace.etsy.com.

Thrift finds and the fun continues.

As I said in my prior post we have small shops popping up all over. We got an email from my sister-in-law stating that she found another one while she was driving down a popular street here and couldn't wait to tell us. This past weekend my daughter purchased a new to her vehicle and I envision us doing even more thrifting. With information coming about new pop up shops in the neighborhood it looks like we are going to have a great year thrifting. Here are some of the finds from last week.

Always linens and scarfs. I think we look for these items first. This collection includes a vintage plastic floral Kleenex box and amazingly a vintage sheet with the same colors, a towel, scarfs, and crochet doilies. Some will be used for sewing projects and others will be listed on the store. Towels we seek out for our vintage bathroom. 

Plenty of vintage linen napkins. These are just some of what we found.

There is a vintage vinyl bag which can hold those wonderful vintage thermos bottles, a Mikasa tea pot, a Pyrex double boiler, and my favorite finds are the stainless steel coffee pot and the vintage Christmas items. 

The Mrs. Santa with extended arms hugs a candle and since there was only one we knew she had to come home and be added to our collection. I have to take a minute and share a fun moment about one of the new pop up shops. We saw the sign outside that said 50% off and got excited about a possible hunt. When we got to the door it was locked, but the sign said open. We knocked and got no response. A minute later the partner to the owner came up behind us and apologized. He had run next door to the 7-11 for something to eat. He was left alone to move a counter to the front of the store and empty boxes. I didn't ask why he didn't have help. I just started to rummage. After we found so much we couldn't hold it any more we told him we were ready to cash out, so he proceeds to write up a slip because he didn't know how to use the cash register. The only job I could find after losing my job in 2008 was cashiering. I wasn't thrilled, but I needed income. I told him I would look at it and help him and he got excited. Well it was just a simple adding machine style register and he knew a couple of steps and I rang up a couple of customers for him to show him the final steps. He had it down by the time we left. We got our items rung up and I think we came out of his shop with close to $90 worth of merchandise for $10. We tried to convince him that it was worth more, but he insisted that the sale was final. He was grateful for the help and as we were leaving at least six more customers came through the door. We helped him and he helped us and business picked up for him. Amazing how that works.

Some more finds included Pyrex, vintage paper party napkins and cups, a turquoise teapot, jelly jars, mugs and a toy VW bug.

The wooden recipe boxes are awesome. To see some one's cooking history and think about the meals that were prepared from the recipes in the boxes has been so much fun. This person even added pictures to her cards for excitement. There were Aladdin thermos bottles and an American Flag themed candle holder. I think that may get painted. 

We found baskets, Wilhold pattern boxes, vintage plastic Christmas table clothes, NIP paint by numbers, signs and framed pictures, cook books and vintage pinking sheers still in the original package along with vintage contact paper.

Then the new desk chair. Yes, there is plenty more and this weekend we visited one thrift store and found so much more in the way of linens. It's been a great year so far. Having the time of our lives junkin'.

Time out to thrift shop.

Enjoy life and do things slow. That's my new motto. I've just stopped pushing and wishing things were different and so far it all gets done and along the way I'm having some fun. Well let's put it this way I am slowing down because the body says to. I had to make a drop off at the donation center so we took the time to do a quick walk through. We found a few new items for the store.

First to be rescued were these two very lovely all hand embroidered, and well done if I do say so, cloths. After soaking what seemed like one hundred years of dust out of them we discovered the beauty of these pieces that must have taken forever to do. They are done in black and red and even the borders were hand hemmed and embroidered. 

Also found was a vintage Vera scarf and two Christmas print napkins. The Vera scarf has the lady bug on it.

We found a pair of Danish style wooden candle sticks and some purple Mikasa pieces. I loved the lavender on the shelf and when my daughter picked it up and it was Ben Seibel Mikasa she got excited. We looked for other pieces but these were all we found. It's simple and attractive. I also went out to an estate sale and found a few small items for myself, like brand new slippers and a pair of vintage webbed lawn chairs that need some serious cleaning, but for $1.50 each I can take my tired bones outside next summer and sit in something of comfort. The webbing on them is in good shape but they are the kind of chairs that you can take the old webbing off of and replace easily by just loosening a screw. They also have the kind of legs that don't dig into the ground and leave you off balance. (Oh I so just blamed that on the chairs). So hopefully with a little WD-40 and some cleaning I can bring them back to awesome condition. One more thing on my list of to do's.