Upcycling Fabrics

Cotton fabric is made from plants and grown in a massive, mass produced kind of way, just like alot of our food is. This is common knowledge, but it wasn't too many years ago that I really became aware of the amount of insecticides/pesticides used to produce conventional cotton. (As a side note, I eliminated all products containing "cotton seed oil" from my family's diet when I made the discovery.)

Make a quick internet search and it will become very clear that cotton is likely our "dirtiest" crop. On several websites I found similar statistics, although not all were the same, they created a picture kind of like this; cotton accounts for about 2% of what we grow, and about 25% of all pesticide use. It really is quite shocking, isn't it?

This is the force that drives me to upcycle fabrics. It seems like almost everyone wears blue jeans and cotton shirts, and when they are holey and worn out, they cannot be donated to charity and need to be thrown out, right? Wrong! Upcycle those old clothes and other household fabrics into something useful, and/or even beautiful, and let me help you do it!

On Upcycle Shed blog I will have tutorials showing how to upcycle all kinds of materials- usually common ones that are found around the house. I will have a new tutorial every week, and at least very other week the tutorial will be on upcycling fabrics. Upcycling fabrics holds a special place in my heart because fabric is not one of those materials that can be thrown into the recycling bin, (if you are lucky enough to have one,) and melted down to make new things. Whether you have conventional or organic fabrics available to you, you are using sustainable practices and doing good things for the earth by reusing them.

Stop by on Friday for a tutorial to help you keep upcycling and creating.

Here are the projects I was working on last week, so if last week you guessed that owls + handbags= Owl handbags, you were right!