Score

On Saturday, I woke up at the crack of dawn and embarked on a journey to Philly.  My mission:  to score cool stuff at the Galbraith & Paul sample sale. 

What is Galbraith & Paul?  A textile company that focuses on hand blocked designs that's located in Philly.  They make lighting, rugs, and fabrics.   They exclusively sell their lighting through Room and Board.   I fell in love with their products while touring the store on 14th St.  My cousin in law, Kara, is an interior designer in Philly.  She has blog, KO Angotti, about sustainable materials and local artisans  She featured the G&P on her blog in October and clued me in about the sample sale.  

I'm always on the look out for interesting fabric and cool pillows at reasonable prices.  Road trip+shopping+hanging out with cousins?  Sounds like fun to me. 

I convinced one of my friends to make the trip with me.  She has an excellent eye for colors and patterns.  We arrived at 10am, when the warehouse opened.  My strategy was to get there first thing, make a mad dash before all the good stuff was gone and get out.  This proved to be a good idea since it was PACKED and we got there at 10:05am.

It was like a rugby scrum except with politely murmured "excuse me's".  People were grabbing pillows and fabric willy nilly.  I was caught up in the excitement and shoved a few pillows at my cousin while I rummaged in the huge pile.  (see above.)  It was glorious!

In the back room, there was a large table of fabric scraps that were $10 a pound.  This proved to be a bonanza.  I grabbed a handful of different fabrics and then narrowed it down to two.  I decided to use the fabric to recover the chairs in my dining room set.  My friend convinced me to go with two different patterns (pictured below with a pillow for the couch) which is radical stuff for me. 

My entire haul (3 pillows and 7 lbs. of fabric) was $300.  The fabric retails for $165 a yard and the pillows retail for $119.  I saved over $500.  Major score.  Stay tuned to see my newly recovered chairs.