Fabric-a-brac awesomeness

Hello lovely people. Remember how several months ago I posted about Fabric-a-brac? A wonderful fabric extravaganza held in my town (my suburb, even. Just two blocks away, in fact!) to raise funds for the local hospice? Well, it was on again on Saturday. Yay!

Just like last time, I volunteered to help out on the fundraising stall. (Fabric-a-brac raises funds in three ways – people can sign up to have a stall there to sell fabric/wool/craft supplies/etc, and the stall fees go to the hospice. They have a tea-coffee-and-cakes stall, which also raises money for the hospice. And then there’s the donations table – they collect fabric/patterns/etc donations before the fair, then sell them on the day and all the money collected from that also goes towards the hospice. And that’s where I come in – helping with the donations table! I went along to help measure and price donated fabric on Friday evening, then was at the fair all morning on Saturday (and early afternoon), helping to sell it. Lots of fun, and we raised quite a lot of money for the hospice. A feel-good, fabric-surrounded day, all in all. 🙂

I spotted quite a few of the local crafty blogging girls there as well – Trees, Ria, Karen, and for the very first time I met Kerry, who’s lovely blog I discovered recently. We had one of those ‘hey, you look familiar… do I know you? Oh, you write a blog, don’t you!’ moments. Good times. 🙂

Here’s a few pictures from the day:

Of course, one of the downfalls of helping man the donations stall is seeing all the donated fabric first, as it comes out of boxes. Um, yeah. I may have gone completely over my budget for fabric purchases for the day. But it’s all for a good cause, right?

I’m not going to list everything I bought here (I’ll save some for later this week). But here’s a few of my finds….

I’m not sure what this is – some sort of rayon or synthetic? (One day I will get good at identifying fabrics that aren’t cotton or merino….) It looks vintage, and is nice and floaty. I’ve got around 4 metres of it, so I’m thinking 1940’s style dress.

This one’s a nice, soft cotton. I have enough for a dress out of this one too – I’m thinking something pinafore style (perhaps the Colette Parfait?) so I can wear it all year around – the colours call out ‘winter’ and the softness of the fabric is calling ‘summer’, so I’m going for a compromise.

I’m not sure what this one is either – something synthetic. It’s not my usual colour/style, but it just wanted to come home with me and probably become a 1940’s style blouse. So I thought I’d humour it.

I also scored a whole bunch of patterns, mainly from the 1970’s. Since I was helping out on the day, I stayed right until the end to help pack up, and someone was throwing out a whole big bunch of vintage patterns. Eek! How on earth could you THROW OUT VINTAGE PATTERNS!!!! So I went through and ‘rescued’ a whole bunch of 1970’s ones. (I must admit to letting the 1980’s ones meet their doom. Sorry, 1980’s patterns – I just didn’t have space for you. 😦 I’m still feeling a bit guilty about that…..)

Just like the fabric, I’ll just show a few in each post. Here’s the first bunch:

Butterick 4661 – a square-neckline, raglan-sleeve fitted tshirt and a back-wrap skirt with big patch pockets. I’m totally going to make this tshirt – so cute in stripes!

Butterick 3037. Not all that exciting, just a jacket and a skirt, but hey, it may come in handy one day. Or it may become a giveaway. Dunno yet – I probably have plenty of jacket and skirt patterns already…..

Check me out! I’m doing my best impression of a banana in full sunlight! Woo-hoo!
Ahem. Yes. Simplicity 8830. Who knows what they were thinking with the fabric choices for either of the illustrations. From 1970 – too much acid, perhaps?

Yep, that is what you think it is. A shirt onesie. There was no way I could leave this pattern behind – every time I’m having a bad day, I’ll just pull it out and look at that onesie and laugh. Brilliant.
I’m almost tempted to make it, just to see what it’s like in reality. (I can’t quite figure it out – why on earth did someone think this was a good idea?) Don’t worry though – I won’t be making it up any time soon. Unless I particularly want to scare small children.