There's More Fabric (and other craft stuff) at The Thrift Store than You Think!

I can't believe that was just $2.50. Well hello shiny crafty people it's Tim Totten here and welcome back to the channel. For today's video I want to talk to you about one of the places that I actually find really good crafting and sewing find and that is at my local thrift stores. So like literally I found this ball of yarn for $2.50. Now I'm sure there are other places to find yarn relatively cheap but I'm going to use this yarn to couch onto a quilt and I like the fact that it's variegated and it would have to be a color that I wanted. Specifically I want to talk about the kind of things that you should search for at thrift stores and maybe how to get your thrift stores in your community to start stocking things that they might normally just get rid of or throw away because you can use it for crafts. So let's see what I got. So at the same thrift store I found this yarn. I also found a huge number of pillows. Now I don't always like to use the same pillows that someone would give away to the thrift store because sometimes they can be stained or ripped or maybe there's not a set. So I'm not looking for pillows to put on my couch or bed at home. I'm looking for pillows to serve as pillow forms. So remember I made a video where I did a book pillow for kids? Well you need a pillow form for that. So instead of paying for a full pillow form, a couple of dollars, I actually went to the thrift store and this pillow was 99 cents. And it's a good size pillow. Now look it's kind of dirty on the other side. I might make a nice thin sheath for this and and cover it or if you're going to put it inside the pillow anyway no worries. And this one does actually have a zipper on the side. So there is actually a form inside. So I could take the cover off, use the cover material for something else, and use that pillow form in a pillow that I'm making for a kid or someone else. At the same thrift store I happened to find three for a dollar fifty. These are placemats. Now you know how often I use placemats to create different projects on this channel? And I love because they're typically you know these are 19 by 14. Just like a typical set of placemats. And there's three of them. Now three might not be attractive because how many people have just three place settings? So you might get a good deal on them. I got these for 50 cents each. Each placemat. Can you imagine a store if I bought these new? These are going to be several dollars each. Now the particular thrift store that I went to also sold fabric in bundles that people had donated. Not every thrift store does that. So at the end of this video I'll talk to you through how to get your thrift store to start carrying fabric. Well this bit of sort of nice a stretch sort of velvety kind of material was all of a dollar fifty. And there's more than a yard here. And so that was a really good deal for me to have some extra fabric. And then of course I did also find and this is not even fabric. Now one of the things you have to look at is oh you want to buy a large amount of fabric yardage. But you know maybe they're not they're not actually carrying fabric donated by people. Quite often though they do carry tablecloths. And these are big. This is a 96 inch round tablecloth. These are only 20 to 30 dollars online if you buy them. A lot of fabric. This one four dollars. All of four dollars. It's amazing. So now interestingly you have to look and see usually 90 inch fabric is going to be pieced in some way. So this one is actually pieced right here. But still I get a 90 inch round material that's going to be great for a project that I'm working on. And it's a whole lot of material for just four dollars. Now it's not just fabric that we're looking for. Sometimes if they if a thrift store carries fabric and other things they'll have other parts and pieces that go along with fabric. So in the same thrift store that they had all of the this fabric they also had some scissors and other tools and things like that. The problem with buying scissors at a thrift store is quite often they're worn out and they're not in as good a shape. But you can find some other good notions occasionally. So double check to see if they have a crafting or sewing section. Of course there are things you can find where you think well I really want to make a special handbag but I can't find all of this stuff that might go with that. Well I like to find handbags that I like parts of. So this particular one I like the handles on this handbag. I don't necessarily like the rest of the bag but I do like the handles and even the zipper. And I thought to myself well for three dollars I would buy this bag and then I will use parts of it. It's not even a lined bag which is one of the reasons why I'm I'm fine taking it apart and and the material is a little messy. So I know that the material is not going to really work but the handles are great. And I priced out handles like this a set of handles like this on Amazon was six dollars. So for three dollars half the price I found handles that I liked. And sometimes you can get a deal if you go into a thrift store where they have a you know they're doing a special on bags. You might get bags 50% off and this would have been a dollar fifty then. Sometimes you just need padding or something in a project you're doing. And I was surprised to find at my Goodwill store this yoga mat. Now I'm going to test this out to see how well this works as a lining for like a beach bag. But I think actually I might be able to make this really work. And it is just a relatively thin yoga mat. It's four dollars and ninety nine cents but it's huge. So I think there's some big projects I can do with things like this. So look for unusual and unconventional materials when you are looking for stuff at a thrift store because it might just be what you need for your project. Now I haven't gone to the most obvious thing that you can buy at thrift stores and that is of course clothing. Clothing is a great way to get fabric for your projects. Now I particularly am working on some denim projects and I went into a thrift couple different thrift stores looking at their denim. Now my experience is some of the name brand thrift stores don't have good prices on denim. If you can happen to get there on a day when maybe they're doing a special price for a certain color tag and maybe you can get a good price. But I went into one store with one local thrift store and they were doing a special on on all jeans were 50% off. But they meant only certain jeans so the all jeans was not accurate. And I was not going to pay ten dollars for a set of jeans so I just waited. But I went into the Habitat for Humanity thrift store that doesn't do as a lot of clothes. And what was interesting is when I found a thrift store that didn't do a lot of clothes they were much more likely to be cheaper clothes. So these this pair of perfectly good jean long pants that are sized 38 by 30. 38 waist 30 inch length which in a previous life I would have fit into these when I was bigger. These were four dollars and 25 cents regular price for a full set of denim jeans that I can cut up and make a whole lot of projects. Or if I just needed to give them to somebody. This pair of jeans even better this pair of jeans is sized 38 34 but they're big chunky wide jeans big ones nice dark color. These are also four dollars and 25 cents. Like I show you something they have this cool print on the back and I keep thinking what am I going to do with that? I mean I'm going to find a way to make a bag or something out of that. You can find really good options for clothes. Now the other thing you want to think about with clothing is that not only can you do jeans and get really good these are wide leg jeans they have really big wide legs they're going to give me lots of material. Not only can you get quite a lot of material at a wider leg of jeans and things but men's dress shirts have a huge amount of material. When you cut the arms off and open them it's a wide amount of material. And women's dresses get quite large especially a big sundress or something else have a lot of fabric in them. Big huge skirts you know gather skirts have a lot of fabric and they don't necessarily price those items based upon the weight or the amount of fabric in them. They price them on you know well a skirt is always eight dollars or a shirt is always 750 or whatever. Also you should aim for the section in the store in the clothing section for larger size items. So extra large 2x 3x the larger sizes and that's because those sizes have a lot more fabric in them so you're actually going to maybe not pay more for the item or maybe just a tiny bit more but you're going to get a lot more fabric. Now I told you I would tell you exactly how to get your local thrift store to start carrying fabric. The reality is that thrift stores get all sorts of things donated to them but some of them don't know how to handle certain items and so they just don't even stock them. They will throw them away or give them away to other people and quite often that includes crafting and sewing supplies. So the first thing you should do is reach out to your local thrift store and ask them if they carry crafting and sewing supplies and if they say no they don't we don't carry fabric we don't bring that stuff in you can start to ask them if maybe that you could either help them to price those items out help them to package them up maybe the secret is they don't realize that they could just package up a number of things together into plastic bags and so they don't have a lot of little pieces flying around that instead of like people having to figure out whether they want to buy how many rolls of ribbon maybe the ribbon is sold in one bag of of 10 rolls of ribbon and therefore they're selling something that makes more money at the same time all at once and the person can't part it out they have to buy the entire you know collection of ribbons or something like that the other thing you can do is is tell them that you would be willing to donate fabric if they were willing to sell it because you certainly have fabric in your stash that you're never going to use if you're willing to make the donation to them help them maybe set some guidelines for how the fabric has to be donated then you can start a section at the thrift store of fabric that people can then go through now of course fabric at the thrift store is never going to be cut by the yard it's always going to be pre-packaged here's what's available you buy it just like it is but it might encourage other people in the community to start donating their fabric so maybe get a few people in your community together who are going to donate fabric to the thrift store and it makes the thrift store sort of the um the clearinghouse for all that extra fabric that's out there in the community and that way when someone says you know my cousin mary died and all of her her husband doesn't know what to do with all of her fabric well there will be a thrift store in town that would actually take that material and sell it out into the community then of course it means you need to tell your friends don't hoard the the information to yourself tell those other people you know who sew in the community that you know the uh life living waters ministry thrift store now carries fabric and crafting supplies and make sure they get down there and patronize them the more money they start to bring in from crafting and sewing supplies the more likely they are to put some effort into stocking those things in their store well that's my thrifting haul from this last week i had a great time hanging out with my brother who's a thrifting junkie he's so good at thrifting i don't like to go thrift store shopping but he was here from alaska and we decided to go and i was so amazed at all the cool stuff that i could find um he found a few things too but he couldn't haul it all back to alaska so he had to leave a lot of it here well who knows i'm sure he will find a way if he really needs it to get it home so i hope you'll go to your local thrift stores figure out what they're doing to help alleviate the uh the waste of fabric and craft stuff that gets thrown away and also help you to reuse it and if you find some cool things let me know what you find i'm excited to hear what you've gotten at a thrift store that really helps your crafting and sewing journey i mean not to mention the thrift stores that carry sewing machines and other stuff like that i mean there's so many things available all right folks if you like this video please go ahead and give me a thumbs up a like a subscribe it really does help the channel youtube totally feeds on algorithms so the more people that like this video and watch it or subscribe to it because of it the more people that youtube will give it to and the more people that get to watch my other content of course you can also join my patreon and i'll put a link in the description below i really appreciate all the people who support me over there and until next time folks stay crafty and thrifty bye for now all right what am i making out of these jeans like i really do think a duffel bag might work oh who am i kidding it's probably going to be some cool box