Thursday, March 3, 2011

Recycling Before it was Recycling

When we first married I realized “two cannot live as cheaply as one”, a saying many repeated often. One of the ways I found to deal with the limited income was in the area of recycling, although we didn’t utilize that word back then.

I had a dress with a wide skirt which I couldn’t use anymore. I took the dress apart and from the wide skirt I fashioned a top and another skirt that required less fabric. I was very happy with my “new outfit”.

Later on I was pregnant. One of the outfits had a top with pleats that were permanently pressed; knife pleats they were called. When my daughter was about three, I took the maternity top apart and with the bottom part and the top part I made a gorgeous child’s dress with a yoke and a pleated bottom. It looked oh, so, tailored.

I also took apart some jeans and made my small boys short pants with bibs. Nice and fun, and still durable as denim jeans are. Since then I have made blankets with blue jean squares and interspersed the denim squares with medium weight cotton. Durable and heavy.

An older friend told me to tear old sheets into strips, sew the strips together and using a large crochet hook, crochet a rug. I also used my fabric scraps to crochet colorful rugs which I placed in the kitchen and by the back door.

Two friends gave me wool which they had purchased at a fabric store sale. It turned out the wool had many flaws. No problem. With the scissors I cut the wool into strips and after deciding on the color scheme, I took out my large crochet hook and, voila, I had a beautiful wool rug which now lies on my bedroom floor.

More later…

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