One Quilter’s Trash Is Another Quilter’s Future UFO

Years ago, my husband dubbed me a “leaver.” If you ask why, he will provide evidence from different aspects of our lives. If I take an umbrella to church on a rainy Sunday morning, for example, I’ll likely have to run back from the car to the sanctuary after service to retrieve it. If I write a detailed list before a big grocery run, I’ll probably leave it on the kitchen island and have to shop from memory once I arrive at the store.

So last fall, when I packed up some unwanted sewing stuff to give away at a guild meeting, I wasn’t surprised at the end of the night when I got in my car and found the bag sitting in the backseat. The demands of life: 1. Michelle’s unreliable memory: 0.

This instance of leaving instigated a rather good idea, though. If I had a bag of quilting paraphrenalia that I was willing to give away, my fellow guild members likely did, too. And my leaver self came up with the idea of a guild-wide yard sale.

The scenario the guild’s board cooked up was a win-win-win proposition. Members could get rid of sewing items they weren’t going to use and could buy ones they wanted for yard-sale prices. All proceeds from the sale went to the guild, for future in-meeting programming. Anything that didn’t sell was given to a local charity.

As a thank-you for participating, we entered donors into a drawing for a $25 gift certificate to a fabric store. (I’m sure the irony is not lost on you: We encouraged people to get rid of quilting supplies and fabric so they could win a gift certificate to buy more quilting supplies and fabric!) To ease check-out, we priced almost everything by category: Books were $3, magazines were $1, fabric was 50 cents an ounce, and so on.

I expected this event to help me clean up my sewing space. I didn’t realize, however, how much awesome stuff my guildmates were going to be giving up, and I scored big. I found a large cut of Denyse Schmidt’s New Bedford line and fat quarters from Amy Butler and Anna Maria Horner ...

And I snatched up other fats from DS, Cotton and Steel, and Art Gallery ...

I also bought multiple yards of Essex Linen, a book, and a pattern. I spent about $18 for all my loot, and I was one of many happy buyers. To boot, the evening raised more than $500 for guild programming. Yahoo!

If you’re looking for an easy way to raise money for your guild, I recommend holding a yard sale. After all, one quilter’s trash is another quilter’s future UFO, right?! If you have other simple ways to grow a guild’s coffers, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

Linking up to Sunday Stash, Let’s Bee Social, and Needle and Thread Thursday ...