Thrifted books (and fabric)

Since we were already downtown on Saturday, I convinced D to stop in at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store. It's enormous, hot, poorly lit, and completely disorganized. To most people, this probably sounds like a nightmare, but I see it as a challenge.

And I scored! I picked up several sweet vintage sheets. Sheets are an amazing way to get tons of fabric for very little money per yard, if you check the labels to make sure you're getting 100% cotton, and keep your eye out for sheets that don't look too sheet-y, if that makes sense. For some reason, many sheets are instantly identifiable as sheets, even when the fabric is cut up. It takes some effort to look for good colors in high quality fabric so that you avoid this problem.

Actually, one of these is a table cloth, but whatever. Sorry for the poor lighting. I swear the colors are cuter in the light of day.

I fell in love with this print, and in person, the colors are a great range of greens on white cloth.

But I really made out in the book section. $2.10 for each hardback, and despite somewhat limited patience, I managed to dig out three books I'm very glad to add to my library.

I grew up with the Jane Brody cookbook, and I love it. The subtitle is Living the High Carbohydrate Way, which thrills me. Of course, she really means veggies and whole grains, rather than say, Twinkies. The Silver Palate Cookbook looks great too, but I'm really excited about the Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing. This little gem has incredibly detailed descriptions of basically every sewing technique you can imagine, perfect for a novice like me.

You can get the new version on Amazon, but the cover isn't nearly as cute. And it probably doesn't have this amazingness...

Seriously, how cool is this lady? I heart the bag, the outfit, the massive sunglasses. I wish the scan quality was better so you could see all the detail.

And this really made my day. It's just a little skirt for wearing to the beach, right?

Wrong. It's also a makeshift tent for changing out of your swimsuit.

According to the book: Worn as a skirt over a swim suit, the coverup will take you in style to snack stand or parking lot. Take cover under the cape for protection against sun or breezes. In a pinch, under its generous width, you could even change from wet suit to dry clothes!

Amazing. Please note that the "cape" does not have slits for your arms, so you would have to walk around like a mummy.

It looks like there are copies of the old version up on Ebay. I can already tell it's going to be a mine of information as I do more and more sewing.