Thrifting and Thank You's

It is such a treat to spend time wandering around in one of the sweet little antique shops in town or perusing a consignment store!  We have plenty of them to poke around in here in our lovely little valley.  (I've yet to attend a flea market, as we don't have any around here, but that adventure will come someday down the road!)

This adorable little striped apron begged to come home with me.  Look at the itty bity ric rac. And it's a Fruit of the Loom!  Remember those funny commercials with the men dressed up in their fruit costumes?

Collecting papers for a fabric journal in the works...

***

I have met the sweetest women through this business.

A friend gave me this beautiful stack of hand knitted dish cloths last week with the nicest little note. They are my favorite things right now!

Our guild president handmade this sweet little sewing kit

just for me! It is a gem. 

I love seeing some scraps from our pillow projects!

Thank you, thank you!  

Love certainly makes the world go round!

Del Rey B.'s Jar

Are you ready for some F U N ?  Today I found a wonderful treasure at one of our local antique shops.  It was a giant jar of really neat vintage sewing items.  Just look at that lid!  Did the owner of this jar catch a caterpillar and watch it turn into a beautiful butterfly one day?

 

I am supposing the jar belonged to 

Del Rey B. because her name is written on the back of

a ruler... So whether all these goodies were hers or her

mother's, grandmother's or her daughter's, I am calling it Del Rey B.'s Jar.

I could hardly stand the excitement... hours later I am still smiling!

So I decided it would be fun to have a little c o n t e s t !

The person who guesses the exact amount of items in the jar will win a cool prize!

I'm not sure what the prize will be yet, but it will be inspired

by vintage and thriftiness and chosen or made especially for the winner!

The rules are simple:

You can guess once.  

If more than one person guesses the correct number, we will have a random drawing of those who guessed it right on the nose.

Sound fun?  OK! Let's do it!!

The jar is gallon sized.

I will give you a few more photos to look at so you 

can make a good guess!

The view above will be one side and here are the three other

quarter turns of the jar:

 

Bottom of the jar...

Top...

It was such a neat thing to empty the jar and pull the contents out one by one... I will even go as far as saying reverent because I can imagine how precious things such as needles and scissors were so many years ago. Most of us have no idea what it is like to go without and feel driven to save every little scrap. 

This ball of string is many little pieces of string all wound together. I have heard stories about people who saved bits of string, but I have never actually seen one of these balls. It has stirred up lots of thoughts about excess, re-purposing & not wasting...

I am fascinated that she would have saved a small length of tan thread and wrapped it over the blue - just in case she might need it later.

This needle case is beautiful!

 Are you catching a few "clues"?  The jar was not filled with as many buttons as I thought it would be.

One other tip... if the needles or items were in a package, it counted as one item. I only counted loose items, except a couple of button cards that had a few buttons on them- each button was counted. If a needle was tucked into a spool of thread, I counted it, too!

 Good luck with your guess! 

The contest will be open until April 12th at 6:00 PM mountain time.

Use it up, wear it out.

Make it do or do without.