Buttons & buckles!

I am hoping the weather clears up later today so I can take some photos of my newest items but, for now I can share with you that finally (!), I have solved the lack of buttons and buckles for the Gok coat!

I love eBay, don’t you? Who doesn’t?! It all started with this great find last week:

18 vintage buttons in grey and black and in the two sizes I wanted. They look a little brownish in the picture but I am willing to put that down to poor lighting and chucked a bid on them.

Then I saw these as well:

Oh, 250+ vintage buttons in grey tones…do I really need 250 buttons? But I love the black and grey set second in from the left…so I put a bid on them as well, they were a great price so why not? Plus they were from the same seller who was offering combined postage. Have I said I love eBay yet? I won both auctions by default since no one else was bidding, yay me, I’ve had some crap online auction luck lately.

No luck with buckles however, just pages and pages of these crazy massive buckle things that make me think of Hulk Hogan, I don’t know why…

…but not quite what I am looking for. So I gave that up on them for a while, my buttons are on their way from America so that cheered me up.

Do not let this image fool you - you will not find all these threads at Spotlight

Then today I went out fabric shopping, I needed lining and a contrast fabric for my next two projects. I swung past Spotlight for another fun visit, the top-stitching thread for my forever (and ever!) jeans remains elusive. I was hoping that since my last visit the Gutermann rep might have made a visit to re-stock and you won’t believe who I bumped into at the Gutermann stand, the Gutermann rep! But before you cheer out aloud he was about as helpful as the staff were during my last visit. The top-stitching threads were mostly empty so I asked him if he had any of them in his box because I was looking for a particular colour that had been out of stock for a while. He told me he had a lot of threads to re-stock and had no idea what was in those boxes until he opened them, then he suggested I come back in an hour to see if he’d re-supplied them. I think it was all a ploy to get rid of me because when I did swing back past on my way home he was nowhere to be seen and neither was my thread.

Sigh…they also had no grey invisible zippers, and not just the 40cm one I needed, none at all…

In between the then and after that is the joy of shopping at Spotlight  I went to one of my favourite Wellington fabric stores, the Fabric Warehouse, and lamented to one of the shop assistants there about the difficulty in finding good notions in Wellington. She suggested I go to Golding Handcrafts in Marion Street because she had seen they had quite a few buckles there and did they?! It’s a good thing I only had 90 cents to  feed the meter or I would have been there all day! As soon as I saw the bucket of buckles I plopped myself down on the floor in front of them and promptly began digging. Oblivious to all that was going on around me I have a nice little pile of about 20 buckles laid out on the floor beside me when the shop assistant offered me a bowl for my selections. I gave her an impish smile and explained (or tried to) that I’d been looking for buckles for quite some time and was excited to see so many. Here is what I dug out of their buckle bin:

I needed a big (5cm bar) buckle and two smaller one (4cm bars) but I couldn’t decide which I liked better. Actually that’s a lie, I like the ones on the left better but I just couldn’t leave the other set behind…I did put back the 15 or so others I had in my greedy little fists firmly telling myself that they’ll be here when I need them later, and there was no need to take them ALL home now 🙂 And the best part is they were only $2.00 each, sweet!

They have a lot of other awesome crafting stuff and plenty of books, so, adding to my Wellington list of resources:

Golding Handcrafts
17 Marion Street
Wellington
04 801 5850
Mon – Fri  9am – 5pm, Sat 10am – 4pm
http://www.goldingcraft.com/

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I’ll leave you with a sneak peek of my fabric purchases for the next two mystery items (ok, so they aren’t so mysterious…)

Black wool from my stash with new cotton lining fabric

Rose printed linen from my stash with new cotton contrast fabric