Booth refresh day and a few small sales

Today I went into the OSS booth and pulled some older merchandise off the shelves as well as put in some custom dyed Halloween dresses I dyed recently. One is a vintage cream colored Jessica McClintock wedding dress I originally got from the Goodwill bins that had a difficult to remove stain on the front skirt. I realized that I could dye the entire outfit with a synthetic fabric dye to hide the stain and make a cute goth “Victorian-esque” dress. I bought four iDye for Poly Fabrics - 454-Black bottles and iDye fixative and boiled the dress in the dye mixture for several hours to achieve a really dark color. My boiling setup is a large aluminum cylindrical pot on top of an old chemistry lab hot plate (not the most accurate temp-wise but good enough). I washed the dress and jacket several times to remove extra dye and my only complaint is that the fabric is wrinkly and I my iron just wasn’t able to get the fabric totally smooth. My guess is that it may have to be steamed/ironed hotter? But I also wasn't brave enough to try.

Because the dress was made of different synthetic materials (possibly even a blend in the lace) the lace turned out a different color than the body. This was a fun surprise because I think that the different color lace adds interest to both the jacket and dress. I used some of the leftover dye for a youth dress I recently purchased from a house clearout. It was originally pink with white trim but the dye turned the dress a deep teal and dark blue mix, with the trims again having different dye results. I love a spooky dye result! These will be fun dresses to display in the booth for the Halloween season, but I am just as ok with letting them make goth displays year-round.

One of my favorite recent finds, a devil embroidered tea towel, just sold on eBay. I found this in a run-down farmhouse sale in rural Salem, OR. When I took photos for eBay I noticed that the feed sack label is actually on the back of the towel and just very faint. Its nice to see how these fabrics get reused!

I also sold a bottle of Haiku perfume on Mercari. eBay has been militant about its “no used perfume” policy, at least for me, including taking down my listings for empty bottles (WHY). I’ve been moving all of my vintage perfumes over to Mercari where they sell just fine.