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Thursday 6 March 2014

Inspiring Thrift Store Fabric

I love fabric bargains so I often go to my local thrift store before I head to the fabric store to see if I can pick up economical yardage. I have often been quite successful in coming home with quite a bit of fabric for a few dollars.
While I worked on my newest landscape quilt, I realized that quite a few of these thrift store fabrics have found their way into this project. What is surprising is that at first glance these fabrics are really not that attractive and probably the reason they ended up at the thrift store. In my work, however, I don't use the fabric as one large pattern, I cut it up into little pieces which I sew together with other fabrics. Because I do that, these ugly fabrics take on a new life.
Take a look at some of these bargain fabrics.


I found this fabric that someone tie dyed and thought it
was really ugly but I managed to get 5 different colours
from it.

I've used this fabric in other art quilts and quilted cards.
They usually have a water theme for which this is suited
perfectly.
I can get 3 colours out of this one and it can be used for
water or forest designs.
So you see, I can make use of any type of fabric in my creations. If you have any pieces of fabric that you don't know what to do with, just send them my way. I'll use them for something.

Here is the progress so far on my Rapids Art Quilt. You can see
a gray rock in the right foreground, forest in the background
and rocks and water in between. You can also see the first
birch tree developing on the left with bits of orange on it.
(Ok, you may have to use your imagination a little)

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