Vintage and Retro Sale

I've surprised myself - I've almost finished my dress (in under a week, no less!) for the Sew Weekly Reunion. More on that once I've taken some photos.

Recently, I was lucky enough to go to a vintage and retro sale in Titirangi, Auckland with Katherine and Tamzen, and boy, what a sale! It was advertised to start at 10am, we rocked on up around 10:15 only to find ourselves at the end of a line snaking down the driveway. There were probably 100 people in front of us. It was the middle of winter, drizzling, and we were lacking caffeine, so we were seriously questioning whether it was worth sticking around for.

We were told that groups of 20 were going to be taken through at a time, for about 10 minutes each. Ten minutes! While we were pondering our chances of actually getting any good stuff by the time we reached the front of the queue, others were walking out with boxes and armloads full of stuff. I'm talking fabric, clothes, shoes, hats (and hatboxes), and all manner of great vintage-y goodness. These people were all willing to throw us a sympathetic bone and exclaim "don't worry, there's plenty of goodies left in there", whilst walking away with a gleeful glint in their eyes at the amazing finds they were walking away with....

It was with a slight manic excitement that we finally got inside, and it did not disappoint. There were two rooms still absolutely chocked full of clothing, shoes, hats, patterns, trims and fabrics. Oh, the fabrics! I rushed around grabbing anything that jumped out at me and only, just, got out of there within the time frame. We had no time to try any of the clothing on so I just had to trust that I had accurately eye-balled everything.



My haul

I ended up with 4 dresses (2 not pictured - 1 is in the wash, I wore immediately that Saturday evening, and 1 I gave to Katherine as it was too big pour moi), 3 patterns, a bag of lace trims (not pictured) and several pieces of fabric.

Before going in, knowing I had limited time, I wanted to focus on finding some polka dot fabric and I succeeded. Katherine helped by shoving a few pieces at me, and I found a few myself. I was most excited about the pale blue and white polka dot piece - it's 2 yards of a vintage seersucker fabric, but when I checked it at home it has some discolouration on it, waaaah.



Hopefully I can work around the damaged area to get something useful out of it. The plaids came as a bundle of 3 for $5 - when I got home and unfolded it I realised that both the navy/red and blue/yellow pieces were around 3m and the grey and white gingham one was a whopping 5m+!! The husband (S-Club) has claimed he wants a shirt out of the navy and red, I'll have to see if I've got the cahones to tackle making a shirt...

I grabbed a $5 bag of trims, mostly for the pink floral ribbon I could see in it, but I'm sure I can find a use for the rest of it

I have no immediate plans for any of it but the thrill of picking up vintage things at bargain prices is too good to resist.

Looking at these photos now, I may incorporate some of those trims into my Sew Weekly Reunion dress.