Wednesday 29 April 2009

Questions - Recycling Clothing

For those of you that recycle clothing into quilts - how do you prepare the fabric? Do you cut out the seams? Do you use your seam ripper? Do you use all of the fabric from shirts - or do you discard collars and cuffs?

And does anyone make pet beds from pillowcases? What do you stuff them with? Can you use the scraps from recycled clothing? (I guess you can see where I'm going with this - is it possible to reuse ALL of an old piece of clothing?)

I suppose the easy answer would be just to do go ahead and do whatever I want, but I'm curious. That plus I want to be sure I'm doing it right. ;-)

3 comments:

Liz in Calgary said...

There are no quilt police, whatever you do will by your own design or inspiration! There is no right or wrong.

I have a ton of silk shirts that were taken apart with a rotary cutter, some collars were kept. Now if only I had a great pattern to use with those lovely silk goodies.

Liz.in.Calgary
http://www.uglyquilts.blogspot.com/

Cathi said...

I read somewhere that someone who cut up shirts and stuff would painstakingly take the collars and cuffs apart. Do what feels right to you!

Valerie the Pumpkin Patch Quilter said...

I use a lot of recycled flannels from family and thrift stores. I save the buttons, but yes, discard the collars and cuffs. Only because I don't know what to do with them...if I had an idea I'd probably save them too! I don't mess with my seam ripper unless it's something small - I just take a pair of scissors and cut along the seams to salvege as much material as possible.

I have never made a bed for a pet but I do remember on one of the quilt blogs a lady who took old worn bed pillows and just covered them with fancy fabric. I thought that was a great idea to reuse an old pillow!

BTW - in my opinion, as long as it does what you want it to, and you are happy with it, there is no way to do it wrong. ;)