Quilt Guild Treasure

Monday night I went to the Austin Area Quilt Guild meeting. On the agenda was a “second chance boutique,” and I expected a couple people selling off frilly country things. I walked in to a gym-sized room stacked to the gills with people selling fabric, books, quilts, sewing machines, and craft supplies. It was heart-pounding — all the stuff I look for at thrift stores and estate/garage sales, distilled down to one location without any distractions. I found one tres 70s piece of brown fabric with jungle animals (below, left) and the seller thought I was weird for loving it. Then I found the woman with the stacks of vintage fabric. At $1 a yard. Yardage! Most of my collection is little squares and scraps. Everything was kind of a blur after that.

Some of these are large-scale and border prints — I don’t know what I’ll do with them, but they are awesome. I photographed them with a fiestaware mug for scale.

Faux Drapes!

The moral of the story is: join your local quilt guild and go to their sales, because they are full of women who want to unload fabric like this because they Lived Through It the First Time Around.

Note: A version of this entry was originally posted on Dioramarama on July 12, 2006. See original entry for any reader comments.