Estate Auction Yarn Score

On Saturday the hubby and I took my stepson and his gal to an estate auction in the neighboring county. Hubby and I are old pros at going to auctions and hadn't been for quite awhile. We knew the kids were looking for dressers and other stuff so when we saw the ad in the local paper we asked them if they wanted to go. Neither of them have been to very many auctions, maybe one or two, so we thought it would be fun to break them in. We have them hooked now :)
Unfortunately, all of the furniture was going for big bucks so they didn't get to score there. But we sent the guys off to the other barn where they were selling tools and other guy stuff so us gals had fun at the main auction barn.
I didn't get pictures of anything but my yarn score (more on that further down in my post) but we did get some other stuff!
For those of you used to auctions, you know how sometimes they throw a bunch of stuff in a "flat" (basically it's a box lid) and you bid on the whole flat?
Our first score was one of those flats and we paid a whopping $2.50 for it. We got Miss M. 7 matching candlesticks, 4 or 5 pretty etched delicate wine glasses, a gosh awful amber jar with a lid, and maybe a couple other things, I don't remember.
Have you seen on Pinterest where you glue together candlesticks and pretty plates to make cute tiered display dishes for cupcakes and such? That's what Miss M. is going to do with the candlesticks! Even if she doesn't use anything else out of the flat, we got our $2.50 worth just for those.
Then we got a couple of nice decent sized pictures that no one else seemed interested in for $2.50 for both of them. They were both probably 2 feet by 3 feet. If nothing else the frames were pretty cool on them so they were worth it just for the frames. Miss M. is pretty crafty so she will probably do something neat with them.
While we were busy, the guys bought stuff like tools and drop cords and a tool box, a bug zapper, camping stuff, and all kinds of guy things.
We never knew what else we were going to find in our truck and their SUV when we took anything we bought out to the vehicles, lol.
All in all we spent less than $100 between all of us and declared the day a success and all had a good time. It was nice spending time with the kids too.
Ok. So now for the big yarn score I got.
For a whopping grand total of $8.50, I got 61 full skeins of yarn and an assortment of  partials and scraps.
I will apologize now for some of my pictures as I really need a new camera.

Here is a picture of all of it before I started to sort it out after I got it home. Remember, this was an estate sale, so a lot of it was older yarn. You can tell by the brands and the prices on the yarn wrappers. In my opinion, yarn doesn't spoil :)
I got the 2 flats for $1 for the both of them, and the big box for $7.50.
There was only one other lady that bid once against me for the big box, otherwise no one else there seemed interested in yarn, which was just fine by me.

These 6 skeins of green were in a clear bag all together and they must be all the same. There wasn't any "brand" on the bag, but it came from Rochelle, Illinois and the cost was $3.47 when bought new for all of them, hard telling how many years ago. You can't hardly buy one skein for that any more. It's a nice soft yarn. Maybe mixed with some white, it wold make a nice set for a boy baby.

There were 16 skeins of whites, off whites and yellows. We all know how many shades of whites there are right? The only thing that matched were the 5 Sayelle off white in the lower right corner. They had the Kmart brand on the label so I know they are old, but they match! You never have enough white, and if they are close and not right next to each other in a project, sometimes you can get away with using different ones.

This is one of my crappy pictures and I'm sorry. These are some of the blues, there were 13 in all. There were a few that matched but not too many. This batch had some skeins from Montgomery Ward for 99 cents each originally.













There were 10 skeins of pinks and a few partials, again quite an assortment with none matching. But I should be able to at least get a baby sweater out of most of them.

Here are the reds and oranges. There were 5 full skeins and some partials. See the third one from the bottom? I have never seen a skein of yarn as long as that one is. It's at least 18 inches long.





Another crappy picture, sorry. There were 3 full purple and a few assorted green partials. The 2 bigger purples are from Grants. You can't buy that anywhere anymore :)

This flat of yarns is all wool or wool blend yarns. I don't use wool yarn for the babies and I don't like to crochet it either as it makes me itch. So more than likely I will bag all this up with the odd ball stuff I don't plan on using and donate it to Goodwill. Someone will hopefully be able to make good use of it. I know I buy a lot of yarn at Goodwill, so it's kind of a pay it forward thing.




Sorry for the goofy spacing on some of this, Blogger wasn't playing nice no matter how hard I tried to make it.
So there you go for our fun day today. I was ready for a nap by the time we got home late afternoon, but it was worth it.

Donations To God's Tiny Angels March 2012

Here are my donations to God’s Tiny Angels this month.

We were concentrating on Easter blankets for the babies and I managed to make 6 quilts and crocheted one blanket so I feel pretty good about that.

I don’t usually get carried away with any “fancy” quilting on my quilts. My sewing machine is pretty basic and I never got a good handle on free motion quilting, so I just do my basic up and down the rows quilting. At least that way it does get quilted, they don’t take as much time, and I can make more quilts quicker to help more babies.

Remember back in July when I got all those really great fabric deals at Wal-Mart because they were clearing out a bunch of their fabric packs? I finally got a chance to use some of them. Here’s the link for that post if you didn’t get to read it.

Wal-Mart Fabric Score

This is one of the blanket kits that I got for $2.20. It measures 36” by 44”. It ended up smaller than that after quilting and trimming it but still a nice size newborn quilt.

 I’ve been watching Hobby Lobby’s ad every week and when ever they have a 40% off coupon I’ve been using it to go buy a quilt batting so it only cost me around $3.00. So I only have a little over $5.00 wrapped up in this  particular quilt. The first picture is the front and the second is the back.

This one is smaller and is a preemie size. I thought it would be really cute for Easter since it has the cute little bunnies and chicks on it. I was really happy to find some solid pastel teal fabric to match the main color of the front so that is what the back of it is and I just bound it with some of the same solid fabric.

This one is also a smaller preemie size. The colors on the first picture are closer to the real color of it. I realize there are flowers on the squares but I’m hoping since it’s predominately blues it will work for a boy as we don’t get as many items for the little guys.

This one is another preemie size. I was having a hard time getting good colors from my camera the day I took these pictures. The colors are more of a pastel and not so washed out looking as this shows, but you get the idea :)

The print squares are actually pretty little purple flowers.  Quite awhile ago I got this huge roll of the purple flower fabric at Goodwill for next to nothing. It’s about 5 inches wide and there are yards and yards of it, so I’m sure you will be seeing more quilts with the purple flowers in it in the future. There is so much of it that I’m thinking about ruffling a bunch of it to make a ruffled dress for my grand daughter.

The teddy bear quilt is also a preemie size and it’s made out of fabric that I got a really good deal on last May at Hancock Fabric. Here’s the link for that post if you want to read about that shopping trip. 

Hancock Fabric Deal

I had plenty of that fabric so I backed the quilt with the same teddy bear fabric and bound it with white to match the other squares.

I call this one my zig zag quilt. It’s made from fabric from the Wal-Mart shopping trip and has Looney tunes characters and Winnie The Pooh on it.  It turned out in between a preemie and newborn size but it should work for a smaller newborn. I used strips of the same fabric with white in between for the backing.  It turned out pretty cute but I doubt that I will be making this pattern again for the babies. It took a lot of piecing so it took a lot more time to put together before I could quilt it. I like how it turned out and I like the pattern but I feel I could have made 2 simpler quilts in the time it took me to make just this one.

I did get one preemie blanket crocheted. It’s made out of an ombre cotton yarn. Can’t for the life of me remember what brand it is.  I THINK it’s the I Love This Yarn cotton that you can get at Hobby Lobby but don’t quote me on that. I do know that it’s really super soft and really nice to work with.

On to other stuff!

Aren’t these little preemie sleepers just the cutest things? My daughter found these at T J Max a while back on clearance and only paid $1.00 each for them. If they would have had more she would have bought them all. Got her trained ! I thought wouldn’t these be neat if someone had triplet boys? So I made a different hat to go with each one. That way you could tell the babies apart. At least that was my thought when I was crocheting them.

On a somber note, unfortunately there is always a need for burial items for the wee angels and I try to make at least one set with every donation I make if I can. Again I was having trouble getting pictures with decent colors, but this is a soft pink and white gown and hat I made for a tiny angel. As I have said before, I don’t crochet all that fast so I didn’t make a blanket to go with the hat and gown, hoping the family can find a pretty blanket to go with it. It has to be difficult to find anything tiny enough when the need arises, so I’m hoping my little set will help ease the pain for at least one family.

On a lighter note, I always make sweaters so I’m just posting pics of all the ones I sent this time. They are made from an assortment of yarns, whatever I happen to pull out of my stash each time. I did manage to get 6 of them done, even with sewing the buttons on, which is my least favorite part of making sweaters. Otherwise I really like making sweaters because they work up fast. I tried to make more boy colors this time as we never seem to get enough for the boys. The blue and red one and the orange and white one were hard to get good pictures of but you get the idea.

And that’s my haul for this time.

Sewing For Miss P

Ever since I got a different sewing machine I've been on a sewing binge. What could be better than sewing for your wee grand daughter??
I've been haunting Pinterest looking for ideas and designs for clothing for Miss P. (Now there's a place to waste a WHOLE lot of time :)
It amazes me some of the ingenious ideas that people are able to come up with. I've been sewing for many a year but would never call myself a really good sewer, but I try.
I got a chance to go see Miss P last night so I took all my sewing goodies for her to try on before I make anything else. Want to make sure my measurements have been good and things fit.
I love the pillowcase dresses for little girls! I suppose that idea has been around for many a year but it's new to me. So simple and so easy.
I will state now please excuse my terrible pictures. I really need to invest in a newer digital camera. But for now with Photoshop I've enhanced my pictures the best I can.

Here is the first pillow case dress I made. Goodwill has been a great place to find pillowcases on the cheap. How can you pass them up for $1.38 each?
A lot of the pillowcase dresses I've been seeing on Pinterest have ribbon for the ties. My thoughts about that was maybe the ribbon would fray easier than material and it probably doesn't hold up all that well for repeated washing and wearing. So I decided most of mine I am making my ties out of the same material as the pillowcase. I made this dress on the longer side with it hitting her about mid calf. Also made longer ties. My thought is it fits her good now as she is only 2 1/2 years old but it should grow right along with her and maybe she will get more than one season out of it.

Here is another pillowcase dress I made her, but I changed it up a bit. Isn't the ruffle on the bottom cute? It came that way, what a time saver!

Instead of doing the tie straps I made a casing on the top and put elastic in it. Then I made little ruffly sleeves for it.

She really liked this one and wanted to try it on over and over.

The material on this one is a light weight flannel and is really soft.

This is my frog dress that I made her. She really really liked the frogs :) It is made along the same lines as a pillowcase dress with an elastic casing on the top and just straight straps. I was afraid the straps would be too short after I made it. When she tried it on for me, it hits her just under the armpits so it probably won't last her as long as the other dresses. Live and learn, but it does fit her. The length makes it either a long top or a short dress.

I think this is going to end up a favorite of hers. It's what we are calling her twirl dress. She loves to spin around and around as fast as she can, so this should fit the bill for her. 

Remember all the great fabric deals I got at Wal-Mart last July? If not click HERE to read about it. 

This dress is made from some of the fabric I got from that shopping expedition.

I changed this one up a bit too. The top is an elastic casing and it fits up under her arms. Then I added a little bib type piece on the front with ties so it fits like a halter top would. My thought on that idea was as she gets bigger or it gets cooler, she can wear a white top under it and wear it like a jumper.

I procrastinated making this dress for awhile because there is a lot of gathering on the three tiers. The bottom one is 90 inches around. I've never had much luck where you sew a long basting stitch on your sewing machine and then put the thread to gather it up. Never fails, the thread breaks on me.

Then I found this awesome link on Pinterest that shows you a super cool way to easily gather your material. Read about it HERE . What you do is lay crochet thread (it's more like a light weight string) on your material then sew a wide zigzag stitch over the thread. Then you pull the crochet thread to gather up your material. After you pin everything up, just pull out the crochet thread. Ingenious!

I tried that for the first time on this dress, and I have to say it made gathering so......much........easier!!

Gosh, sure wish I had know about this years ago! Love it.

Made some other clothes for her too but didn't get pictures taken before giving them to her. Maybe later on I will get pictures of her wearing some of the stuff.

Look who had to help while I was sewing! Baby decided she needed to do acrobatics on the leg to my card table while I was trying to cut out material. She kept wobbling the table enough that I finally had to shoo her away before I ended up cutting something all wonky.

That's it for today, need to sew some more :)

Great Fabric Score And A New Pattern

I've been in a sewing mode lately and have been trying to make clothing for my 2 year old grand daughter.
While out running errands today I stopped at Hobby Lobby so I could pick up some more elastic.
I had a coupon for 40% off  one regular priced item. I couldn't let it go to waste, right? So I broke down and bought a new sewing pattern. This is what I got. But oh my goodness, I obviously haven't bought any patterns for quite sometime because I about choked when I saw how expensive they are anymore!
$11.95 for a pattern for a 2 year old, and an easy sew one at that. All I can say is wow.
I've been haunting Pinterest for blogs with free patterns and have had quite a bit of good luck there, but I was still hankering for a commercial pattern so I could be sure I was getting a fairly accurate sizing.
Even after my discount I still paid $7.19 (plus tax). BUT, I did get patterns for a dress, a top, shorts and pants so all in all I guess the pricing wasn't all that bad, especially after the discount. And it does include sizes 1/2 to size 4.
The tissue paper the patterns are on nowadays are recycled paper and it sure is flimsy.
So here is what I decided to do.

I'm tracing all of the pattern pieces onto heavier paper. That way I can trace the size I need now (which is a size 2 for the top and dress and size 3 for pants and shorts). Then as Miss P grows, I can trace them again in the bigger sizes and I haven't cut up my original pattern pieces!

So, this pattern should last for quite awhile and believe me, I will really get my money out of it. Sure, it takes extra time to do this, but it will really save me money and time in the long run.

The paper I'm using is actually from a roll of exam table paper that I had. It's just thin enough to see the pattern piece through it but sturdy enough that I should be able to cut from it more than once.

I cut all the pattern pieces apart and took just the ones I want to use first to trace. I taped the pattern piece to my card table then I taped the exam table paper on top of that. By taping them down they didn't slide around on me as I was tracing.

I used a fine point marker to trace just the size I need for now, which in this case was the size 3 for the shorts.

Now the fun part will begin when I get to cut out the fabric and sew!



Now here is the other great part of my day.
I decided to make a pit stop at our local Goodwill to see what might jump out at me and say BUY ME!
I really lucked out!

I got all of this fabric for the grand amount of.............
$2.38!!!!!!!
Can you believe it? I sure couldn't. Now granted I might not use the second one from the right, don't know yet, still thinking on that one. BUT all the rest of it is looking more and more like becoming some cute clothing for Miss P. There was a total of 8 1/4 yards which comes out to just under 29 cents a yard, woohoo!

Here is a close up of the sage green and sage green stripe material. There is 1 1/2 yards of the solid and 2 yards of the stripe. I'm thinking the solid for some shorts and the stripe for a top with material left over. They both feel like a polyester/cotton blend.

The navy blue with white dot material is 4 yards and feels like a seer sucker type of material to me. Maybe a dress?

The flowery one on the right is a black background with multi colored flowers and is more of a knit type of material. There is 1 3/4 yards of that. Might be kinda dark for a 2 year old, but maybe if I did one of those cute dresses I've been seeing on Pinterest where you use a tank top shortened up and add layers of ruffles to the bottom to make a top or a dress it would be ok. Then it wouldn't be the prime material.
There is 3 yards of the second one from the right. Not overly fond of it. Maybe it will grow on me and I will think of something to make out of it, but don't really think I like it for Miss P.
So, there are all my goodies on my jaunt out today.

Cats, Snow, and Good Neighbors

The other day we got some really heavy wet snow. I have a hard time shoveling anymore and my hubby had just got home the night before from being in the hospital for 5 days. He had to have emergency small bowel surgery and an appendectomy. So he sure wasn't in any shape to be shoveling.
But....we have the best neighbors ever! I was only able to get a picture of one of them but here is a HUGE shout out to our neighbors that live on each side of us. Here's to Bill G. who always comes along and shovels our walk, and to Ernie F. who snow blows whenever we get more than a bit of snow.

Here's Ernie being the good guy that he is and snow blowing our driveway.
Just sorry I didn't get Bill's picture too. He is usually out and about really early and was all done before I got a chance to take his picture.
Many of us in the neighborhood are retired, and we all try to help each other out when we can.
We try to keep these guys and their families supplied with deer meat and catfish as out way of saying thanks for all their help. Guess we are all bartering in our own way hey?

Here's Baby (on the left) and Rocky (on the right) doing what they do best whenever we get a good snow. It's pretty unusual to see the two of them sleeping this close to each other and I just couldn't resist the picture. They were both passed out pretty good on the love seat because neither one of them even cracked open an eye when the flash went off.

That's my post for this weekend. More to come later in the week.