Day 24: Reusing Textiles

What do you normally when your clothes or linens get too worn out and are no longer givable, either? Throw them out, right? Well, here are a few ideas on how you can reuse all sorts of textiles, like clothes and household linens, once they are past their prime.



Did you know clothing is recyclable (as opposed to reusable)? Yup, I wasn't sure until I googled it, but it is! Finding somewhere to bring your clothing for recycling, though, is the main challenge. I've found companies that recycle textiles, but I'm having lots of trouble figuring out where, and even if, I can bring my used textiles to them.

For U.S. Residents, I found Recycle Now that you can enter your postcode and see if there's somewhere near you where you can recycle clothing and household textiles. But I've had no such luck for Canadians :( Which encourages me even more to find a way to reuse my old worn out clothing.

Of course you can make useful rags, to help get your house clean. Seems like most of my rags are made of clothes!! But I wanted to find more creative ways to reuse old textiles. Here's some of what I've found.

I've recently been amazed at stuff people crochet out of t-shirt yarn. Of course, the first thing you need to do is make the actual t-shirt yarn.

Craft Passion

You can also turn an old bedsheet into yarn! It's a little different than with tshirts, Kara of Petals To Picots shows you how in this tutorial:


And these, THESE are why I need to learn to crochet!!! You can crochet just about anything with t-shirt yarn.

You can follow just about any crocheted basket tutorial to make a t-shirt yarn basket. For example:

Instructables

How about making some pom-poms, to decorate gifts, or to use in crafts!

Craftaholics Anonymous

Or how about making your space a new spiffy rug? Like this crocheted t-shirt yarn rug.

One Dog Woof

Of course you can just make a braided rug too, out of strips of linens.

Craft Passion

While I'm on rugs, how about a shaggy rug made from old cut-up towels and using a gridded matting?

Fine Craft Guild

There are plenty of other things you can do with used clothing and other household textiles to give them a second life.

There's the ever so popular sweater pillows as of late. I think I might convert a few sweaters once their time is up, but I still want to use them a bit longer.

Brassy Apple

Remember when we talked about not-paper towels? How about using some shirts to make napkins, like these plaid ones!

Whole Living

Here's one I really love! Make a stuffed animal out of old denim, like this denim whale!

Valaan Villapaita

Once again, this time with printed t-shirts, make some pillows!

Uncommon Designs


I hope I got your wheels turning with these ideas to reuse textiles! You are only limited by your imagination, and creativeness :)

Check out all the posts in the series (must be on blog to see):








I party at these parties.