Quilt Show Garage Sale

The Kingwood Area Quilt Show and Auction is over for another two years and I am suffering from post show let down.


Not that it was not a wonderful experience but after living with it for the past year and a half I feel like there is nothing left to do...BUT I have lots to do like start cleaning all the spaces in my house I have not been able to clean since it started filling up with boxes, bins and bags of donations.


Here are some photos of what I had to offer...

Two tables of scrap fabrics.

Two tables of pre-priced items

Five tables of books, magazines and patterns

Four tables of larger pieces of fabric and tons of non-quilting fabric.

See all those bins and boxes under the tables?  They are full of even more stuff to sell and by the end of the first day most of the bins had been emptied out onto the floor in that search for the perfect fabric for a project.  


In the end almost everything was either sold or given away.  Anything left I considered worthless and is being recycled or trashed.


All in all we made over $2,500.00 for the Guild!


If you and your organization want to do something similar I would recommend the following:

• Start early to gather your stuff to sell.  Six months before your sale is almost too late.
• Do not limit yourself to just one type of goods.  Although this sale was part of a Quilt Show about 25% of what I had to sell was non-quilt related books, fabrics and supplies.
• Simple pricing allows easy change making and allows buyers to easily figure out how much they are spending.
• Don't worry about perfect accuracy in calculating yardage.  An extra $0.50 will not make or break your sales figures.
• Be prepared to bargain!  Sometimes people did not want to pay $5.00 for something pre-priced so I would make a counter offer or, if they were already buying  a lot, throw it into the mix for free.
• There are two goals to this kind of sale - make money for your organization AND to help members get their discards out of the their homes into someone else's home.  Be prepared to just give it away for free if that's the only way to get rid of the stuff.  I'd say about 20% of what I had was free for the taking.
• Find out what people want to acquire and be prepared to offer it to them even before the sale happens.  About 20% of my sales were made before the show even opened.

Now I have at least a year before I start doing it all again.  I hope I will continue to have the energy and friends necessary to make it another successful sale!

Until then I will catch up on my sleep and puppy time.