Reason #1,049,823,975 why I love Housing Works

I've posted previously about my love of thrifting, and even though I'll admit to having recently bought a few things from stores, I'm probably still at 80/20 thrifting. The day after I handed my PhD thesis to my committee, I took a day to "indulge" myself at the Housing Works Buy The Bag store in Brooklyn.

Housing Works (particularly the Chelsea and Park Slope stores) are my absolute favourite thrift stores for one very good reason, they extensively sort donations so that the items on offer are consistently good quality and reasonably priced. The Buy the Bag store is where everything else ends up. It's not for the faint of heart, a warehouse with multiple deep wire bins of everything all jumbled together, but if you are gung-ho about it, it's a great experience!

Besides the shoes and two panels of fabric way over on the right, EVERYTHING on the couch cost me $25. Including multiple canvas shopping bags, two belts, a purse, a laptop bag, a vintage wool sweater, a sweater for my boyfriend, three t-shirts, one shirt for refashioning, Rogan jeans, two skirts, new PJ pants, a jacket and a hand knit cowl I frogged for the pretty yarn. And the shoes and fabric? $18 from the Park Slope store :) I have a game I play where I google what I bought when I come home and those DKNY shoes retail for $120 and the jeans around $200. WHUT?!

Today I finally got around to slicing up the t-shirt for refashioning, a XL Gap Red t-shirt with a print of a girl riding a T-Rex. I have no before pictures but that should be pretty easy to visualize (basically a boxy, white tee). After laying the tee out as flat as I could, allowing the fabric to follow it's natural bias (why are t-shirts always cut out so badly that the seams twist?!), I pinned a shirt I like centered over the dino-girl and sewed the sides right side out and cut off the excess fabric. Then I cut neck and armholes, turned the whole thing inside out and french seamed the sides. For the neck and armhole facings, I sewed on a narrow strip of vintage lace to stabilize fabric then folded under once at the arms and twice at the neck before top-stitching down. I've never done this before but it prevented the lettuce-edge I've had before when trying to sew thin knits.

 I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! Always good to have a new shirt to add into rotation :)