Adventures in fabric scavenging

I love to wear comfortable knit dresses, but I have trouble finding ones that fit, are flattering and have pockets. Since the pandemic began, I have made myself three dresses that met my requirements. When I picked up the fabric that later became this dress, I would not have imagined it could make clothing that I liked.  

As you know from my previous post about acquiring fabric to upcycle, I have been using Facebook to find materials. Someone a few miles away from where I live posted that she had free fabric to give away. Of course, I was all over it. 

When I arrived at her house, there were three of four paper bags on her doorstep - the picture had depicted one bag. It seemed like more than I needed, but it was winter with snow on the ground during a pandemic so I took the bags and decided to sort through them at home. The fabric giver told me I could pass along anything I didn't want. 

The bags were a complete jumble of fabric, notions and random craft items. And judging by the prices on some of the items, many of the notions were at least 40 years old. 

There was one absolutely beautiful piece of fabric in the lot and a few that looked like pieces I could work with. But most of the fabric was musty -  like it had been sitting in a garage or basement for years. Some pieces were discolored. I thought I might toss quite a bit of it. I gave away the jingle bells and confetti packages. But the longer that I kept the other assorted materials, the more I realized I could use them after all. 

I washed the musty fabric. And then I made my first knit dress using this pattern. Of course I wanted another and it occurred to me that there were knits in the jumble stash. I took the two pieces of black/white fabric that are pictured here for the dress. The larger piece had tan in it and I had a tan t-shirt with a hole in it sitting around I had to cut off the discolored parts of the striped material, but there was still more than enough to work with.

So even from materials that I first thought were unusable, something new could emerge.