Isabella's Project Diary

First, this is why I should never actually shop for tiaras. Seriously. WANT! However, I'll have to win the lotto tomorrow to even begin to afford that....

Second, buyer or searcher beware. The Fabric Exchange is a relatively new seller who is keyword spamming fabric searches. Let's say you are searching for red silk, their items will pop up with green cotton...a lot of green cotton which isn't even close to what you are looking for. It's because, at the bottom of their descriptions, they include a ton of keywords like kimono, red, silk, ect. This is against ebay's rules but -of course- ebay refuses to do anything about it.

So, given that there isn't a way to realistically boycott ebay, there is a way to get around this idiots spam. When you search for fabric, include this in your search: -(THEFABRICEXCHANGE.COM)

You can include other things you DON'T want in the ()'s. Like if you are looking for purple organza but you don't want it to be a polyester, your search will look like this:
purple organza -(THEFABRICEXCHANGE.COM, poly, polyester)

I've found that by cutting these idiots out of a search, my results go down by half -making it much easier for me to find what I need.

Wow! I got the 20 yards of silk I ordered from Fabric.com (the $1.95 stuff) and pieces to an Edwardian tea gown I got off of eBay today. Silk first:

It's a very deep green to the point I think it's only two shades away from black. Which is perfectly fine by me. Either way, pink and red look fabulous with it so I'm fine. It does have slubs but it's nice and lightweight so I'm thinking Pennsic usage here...

The extant tea dress has all the original snaps still sewn into place. It feels like it's a cotton voile but I'm not sure. I have the original skirt, still sewn together, the bodice front and back and most of the sleeves (it looks like someone cut off the underarm part?). So, now to get some voile for the "belt" to the dress and to fix the sleeves so I can put this thing back together again!

The tea dress I'm working on (my own, not extant, the one I posted pictures of last night, ect) just needs to be resewn up. I took it apart the moment I got home and it's in pieces next to the sewing machine. I guess I should go and sew it back up now...

So I have the high bid on an item I really really want. The seller is from Italy but she often sells to the US; I've seen some of her antiques before. The item only has a day left and I was getting really excited about it until I saw this message in my email:

Hi,
I got an offer of 300 euro.
Are you still interested for 330 euro plus shipping.
Best regards
Danilo



First off, my high bid a lot less than 300 euros (which is about $415) and s/he wants me to pay nearly $450 for something that, legally, I already have the highest bid on?

Yeah, I've reported it to ebay. Yeah, I realize I probably won't get the item. I've told the seller that the offer of 300 is more or less likely a Nigerian Scam (contact and offer for at least 3 times the original list bid? Make sure the transaction is outside of Ebay? Yeap, scam.) and that I was going to hold to my current, legal, high bid on ebay. Yeah, I realize there isn't much I can do if they pull it - but Ebay can throw a hissy fit about it!

...and I really really want the item. It's so pretty and would be an excellent addition to my textile collection.

Www.bidville.com will be dead in the water as of June 13,2008. I joined bidville about 4 years ago. I tried selling on it, opening a store, and bought a few things but it just never really caught on as the "e-bay alternative" it was supposed to be. Despite around 1m auctions, it didn't fit in with the u-bid business model and they are closing it down quickly.

www.etsy.com seems like it might be slightly better but it's still a "oh pretties! Not ebay!" type front and I'm afraid that, unless it becomes a lot more popular, it too will go down like yahoo, overstock, and now bidville auctions.

The thing is, I have noticed that although there are more auction on E-bay now than ever before on average, the amount of items being sold is down. I know I'm not buying off of ebay much anymore since they changed their policies. I might be able to find good cheap fabric there but I can also wait for a coupon from fabric.com and now what and whom I'm dealing with. (The guys that work at fabric.com are great!) I know they don't cheat on shipping and what they say the fabric is, it is. Besides, $4 linen? Beautiful!

So, I guess my question is, are on-line auctions slowly going the way of the do-do bird? Is there a day soon when we won't have ebay? Are craigslist and these online shopping malls finally getting their footing enough to be competitive against the e-bay giant?

This guide is mainly in reference to online auctions but can be used on search engines as well.

I've seen and heard of many people who ask "How the heck did you find that? Whenever I search, I never find anything like that" Most of the time, in my case, it's in association with fabric or accessories I find online. Despite the large (volumes!) amount of fabric I have, I rarely spend more than a few dollars a yard on any of it. It's not that I have some magically powers that enable me to find great pieces at very low prices, it's all how you conduct your searches.

( how to conduct searches )

Hopefully, this will help some people in finding objects they want on Ebay and also to get better search results. Feel free to ask questions!

For those that don't know, Ebay, once again, is threating to raise their rates. You can read the article regarding the strike here:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/07/smbusiness/ebay_boycott.fsb/index.htm?postversion=2008021009
I've pretty much given up lately on selling on ebay for a variety of reasons. It's expensive for one. Even if you do manage to sell your item, you get a chunk of the selling price out both from the Ebay fees and the paypal fees. Unfortunately, there are very little alternatives to paypal right now.
( Ranting about Ebay. Feel free to join in )
It all comes down to the money. Do you rather have a ton of upfront costs or sit around and hope that your item might sell? Basically, although I won't be bidding or selling during this strike I don't think it will change anything at all.

I'll post fabric later for now it's just random stuff. I'll probably have things like corduroy and plaids up by tomorrow.

I added a blue crinkle cotton and a poly organza embroidered sheer to my list of things to sell. They are up on my JubileeL account.

..and are grumbling about the latest policy changes on e-bay...

http://www.bidville.com/greedbay.htm