Thrift Cloth! From the Regular Thrift Store!

It's been a long time since I've seen yardage in the regular thrift store, and probably longer since I've seen any I wanted to buy.

I had to run some errands last Friday, and stopped in the thrift store, just because I could.  I have a list of things I'm hoping to find in thrift stores, and I was happy to find one of those: a mechanical Bissel sweeper (in a cheerful blue, too.)

The section where it was is next to the racks where they hang bed sheets, curtains, and other large fabric home goods.  I usually ignore those, but, since I was in that area while making sure the sweeper worked, I naturally glanced over...and saw a print that was absolutely yardage.

I wouldn't say it was calico, because it was also very obviously possessed of a high polyester content, but it did have a 1970s/80s ditsy calico style floral print.  I quickly noticed other pieces of yardage hanging next to it, and then some more a few feet away.  Some of them...I even liked!

 

The brown floral was the first of these that I saw, and, even with my general disinterest in brown, I was charmed by the olive green leaves, and the fabric also feels really nice.  It's 42" wide, and there's 4 yards of it.  The blue floral may be a bit Early 1990s Romantic (there's a 1994 copyright on the selvedge), or even...dare I say...Cottagecore...  But!  I could tell there was a lot of it, and, when I got home and measured, it turned out to be nearly 6½ yards, also 42" wide.  It'll probably end up in a lot of different projects.

The heathered wine wool blend is something that anyone who knows me knows I couldn't leave behind.  I did a burn test, and the flame went 🎇, so I know the other fiber is nylon.  It's 3 yards of 60", and I found receipt pinned to it when I was preparing it for laundering.

I will not pass judgement on this person's grasp of grammar or multiplication, but I do thank them for letting me know the fabric was purchased on January 31, 1987.  Maybe I'll use it before another 39 years pass.

The final fabric is about 4 yards of 60" wide interlock, which I decided to take a gamble on being 100% cotton, and the burn test seemed to say it is.  The print is not my ideal English Rose Chintz on a knit, but the colors are good, and there's a lot of it.

This piece of yardage also had a bit of receipt pinned to it, although nothing as dramatic as the other.

 

I paid $3.99 for each piece of fabric here (and for the Bissel.)  Since there's around 17 yards, that ended up being under $1 per  yard.  Out of curiosity, I weighed the fabric and calculated how much it would have cost from the craft thrift store.  It would have been...a lot more.

I am going to try to use most of these by the end of the year, along with more of the fabric I got from the craft thrift store at the end of last year.  Even with my renewed interest in customizing dolls (I've done eight reroots since the end of February!), I should be able to make time for more dresses.