sewing: musing about embroidery floss

I pick up embroidery floss whenever I see it while out thrifting. I picked up a whole, filled bead-box with about 100 colors for $4.50 one time. Maybe even more colors than that. So that’s about four cents a skein, while nowadays a skein retails for about thirty-five cents. It’s not like floss is going to

thrifting: Bucilla pillowcase pair

Yay, I finally thrifted a pillowcase blank where the manufacturer is legible! Bucilla, and they have a lot of options available for sale on the web. These are my favorite pillowcase blanks to find, because the cotton is the best quality and the designs are significantly more intricate than their competitors. But I’d never found

Thrifty Thursday: lots of finds!

My sewing machine finally could not be coaxed into a consistent tension (all those awful loops disfiguring the back side) so I took it into town for a maintenance check. If there’s little bits of fuzz somewhere fouling up the works, I could not find it – but maybe a professional can figure it out!

pretty things

I refer to my stack of old issues of Victoria magazine when I want to be inspired about pretty things to buy or create. These photos are from the September 2002 issue and likely my eye skipped over them the first time, because what I was looking at eight years ago are likely not the

score! beautiful tablecloth while thrifting

I haven’t been thrifting much lately, because as I said, once you have everything you need, it doesn’t make sense to keep buying more stuff even though something is cheap or old. But I can’t say no to old linens, and this tablecloth is like-new gorgeous! I am guessing it is from the 1950s or

what’s better than a sale?

What’s better than a sale? A vintage clothing sale, that’s what! Just to help spread the word about a good thing, J Peterman is having a sale on some of it’s close-out items. I bought this gorgeous dress a few weeks ago when it’s sale price was slightly higher, and it is my favorite dress

a fine day thrifting

My thrifting has slacked off, you probably have noticed, because at a certain point even though something is a very good deal–you have enough stuff and saving money for something still isn’t a good idea if you didn’t really need it in the first place. So I am trying to be careful about buying. Still,

long time projects

I picked up an old table while out thrifting about two years ago. I knew it had potential, but wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it. Most GoodWill furniture is of crummy quality or is unfixably dinged up, but this table had remarkably few scuffs and chips. So into the garage it went

thrifting: pink gingham apron

Things have been slow on the thrifting front, but I did find a sweet pink apron. There’s chicken-scratching (is that what those white stitches are called? My mind is blank, if that’s not right) around the hem, and lots of pink rickrack. Rickrack seems to be the trim of choice for aprons. Up it will

thrifting: stylecraft cups

Can you believe I found a whole set of these cups, and they aren’t chipped and the handles aren’t broken??? I’m not 100% sure they really are Stylecraft because they aren’t marked on the bottom; they say only Japan. But wow–I find one of these cups every six months or so, and now a whole