On Sunday, I drove out to Sturbridge to meet up with doll club friends and Susan Fosnot for a fun day of shopping for doll stuff. We did this same expedition last year when Susan was in town. Someday we might make it to some of the other stores in Sturbridge!

We went to Wright’s Factory Outlet where I got brown rickrack (10 packages for $1), crewel needles (3 packages for $1), sheets of plastic that are used by quilters to make templates and you can iron on them- I will use them when I fuse fabrics because I am always messing up my iron and ironing board (3 sheets for $1), some faux silk embroidery ribbon (3 pkgs for $1), and some furry textured trim that looked like it would be fun to play with. Then we went over to the Antique and Vintage Textiles store. There is so much to look at! My pictures are pretty bad but…

drawers and bins and boxes of buttons-

fabric sorted by era- back to the 1800 and forward to about ’70s-

This shows the fabic that is on open shelving- mostly large panels like drapery panels. There are also bins full of yardage and smaller pieces for each era. There is loads of more stuff there, all very interesting, but I was distracted by shopping and didn’t do a good job with photo documentation.

This is most of what I came home with-

I bought a bag of scraps ($3) because it had some nice old cotton rickrack in it that I wanted- this is the rest of the stuff-

the rickrack that was in the bag was a little unfinished project. The blue rickrack was also in the bag. The other white and the lilac I found seperately. It is all nice cotton stuff-

tapes- cotton, rayon and silk-

and I got sucked into examining all the amazing buttons. These are the ones that came home with me-

see the little 3 hole buttons! The loose ones in the middle were all together in a bag of misc. white shell (mostly) buttons. There are lots of tiny buttons just right for doll clothes, or grandma earrings.

And this was the item that I just needed to have, even though I will probably never use it. I just thought it was so pretty-

This is one of 7 pieces, all totally off scale for dolls… but what can you do… I will but it in with my other lace and everytime I sort through, I will find it again and it will make me happy. What more could I ask for?

It was a great day and Susan came home with me. I will post about that next.