Overload

My local thrift store.  Photo courtesy 2nd Mile Center

I had to share a something that happened yesterday.  I was heading out to lunch with another woman from the offioce, walking down to Reading Terminal (a large indoor food market in Philly), and because she didn't have her jacket, we decided to cut through Macy's instead of walking around the building.

I can't tell you the last time I was in a department store, let alone a Macy's at lunch hour, with the big Wanamaker's organ playing in the background and an anthill worth of people milling around.  Why do those stores always feel like it's Christmas?

It stopped me for a second.  All the stuff was just overwhelming, and I realized as we continued our walk that the extent of my shopping in the last few years has been for food or fabric, or at thrift stores.  Being inside an actual, huge retail establishment was weirdly disorienting.

Macy's at Christmas. Photo courtesy Getty Images.

And yet, that kind of shopping used to be a way of life.  Maybe not department stores (at least for purchasing), but I was a happy browser and would go in any store and look around, more often than not coming out with a bag of something that I didn't really need -- and probably just recently unearthed and donated.

Chocolate, vanilla and strawberry

In my recent post, I showed off a thrift-store find that was going to become a little dress.

Here's the result -- finished all but the little pink buttons down the back, as my new sewing machine and I haven't become sufficiently well acquainted for me to risk mangling cotton lawn while making buttonholes.

There are some scraps left and I'll try the buttonhole attachment out on those before finishing this off.

It's not easy to see in the photo, but I used the waist tie from the skirt to make a tiny bow on the shoulder of the dress.

I'd still wear it, if I could fit into it.

Thrifting Rules

Almost everything I make is from fabric that started its useful life as something else.  Thrifted fabrics have always held an attraction for me; after years of buying things at secondhand stores that weren't old enough to be vintage or anywhere near my size, I finally have found uses for the bags of clothing I'd stashed away.

I do have a few rules when buying thrifted clothes - obviously, it can't look too worn, or at least whatever part of it that I'm eyeing can't (yes, I've purchased garments before just to get at the buttons); they can't have moth or any other kind of damage that will continue to cause the fabric to deteriorate, otherwise I'm just making something doomed to fall apart; and - at least for the most part - it can't be too good to cut up.

I say for the most part because occasionally something will crop up that causes me to blow by that rule like I'm trying to beat a red light.  The fabric that forms the basis for this cuff was one of those pieces.

It started out as a very cute Ann Taylor Loft skirt, side invisible zip, stretch corduroy.  What got me was the unusual and yummy combination of dark chocolate brown and rich purple.  I looked at the colors and immediately something in the back of my brain started working.

What can I say?  It came home with me to find its place in the clothing bag, and recently, when I started working on a series of cuff bracelets, it was one of the first fabrics that came to mind.

I'm pairing it here with a silk dupioni remnant that I've been working off of for literally years, a great purple/golden brown combination, and embroidery threads in rich purple and amber.