Recycling & Upcycling for the Sewing Room

Last week’s blog covered some of my favorite quilting tools, conventional and unconventional. So this week, I thought I would continue with this unconventional theme. I’m going to talk about recycling, upcycling and things that will help save you money. And who doesn’t want to save money? These tips are ones I use all the time when I’m quilting and maybe they will be some you like and will adopt as well. Let’s get started!

Tip #1 – Batting

So you trim pieces of batting and are collecting them. What do you do with all these extra pieces? If you’ve followed my blog for awhile, you know I do not like to throw things away when I can. find a use them. Well, here’s two ways to use and reduce all these scraps of batting. 

The first way is to purchase batting seam tape and use it to make larger pieces of batting from the scraps!

It’s actually very simple to use. Heat your iron to the wool setting for all types of batting, except full polyester. For 100% polyester batting, use the silk or synthetic setting. The instructions say to use steam but I used my iron dry and it worked just as well, you can test it out both ways if you like. So here’s the steps:

Butt the two edges of the batting pieces up to each other as shown in the first photo on the left. If you need to trim edges to make them a little straighter, do that before lining them up. Then, lay the tape across the seam (photo2) and press with your iron (photo 3). Now you have a larger piece of batting (final photo)! This strip of batting can now be added to another one to make a bigger piece.

Option two can be done if you don’t have any batting seam tape. You just need your sewing machine! Here are the pieces I want to work with:

Like I said above, trim up sides to make them a little more even and you can even lightly press the pieces of batting so they lay a bit flatter, but that’s not required.

Now, set your machine to a zig zag stitch and attach your zig zag foot. Like with the seam tape, butt the edges together that you want to join and zig zag stitch them together. You may need to play with the width of your stitch to make sure it catches both sides.

As you can see from the photo on the left, my stitching is joining the pieces. On the right is my stitched together piece of batting that is now big enough for a table runner I am ready to quilt.

Tip #2 – Fabric 

Another thing I do not like to waste is fabric. We all know how expensive it is, so I like to use up as much as I can and throw away very little, if any. Here’s a one of my fabric saver tips and few ways to use up fabric scraps and reduce waste.

First – A Fabric Saver: If you only have a few flying geese units to make and are not using the “no waste” method to make them… or if you do not like to use that method, here’s a way to not feel guilty about using the traditional method. Here are the pieces needed to make my geese unit:

To start,  instead of drawing just one diagonal line from corner to corner on the wrong side of the small squares, draw an additional line 1/2 inch away from the first line:

Now place the square face down on the rectangle, just like you always do when making flying geese, and stitch along the drawn lines. Once that is done, cut 1/4″ in from the first diagonal line (between the stitched seams).

After you press open the this side and repeat the step on the other side, you not only end up with a flying geese unit but also two half-square triangle squares! You can also chain piece these geese units. It just takes an extra line of stitching so it doesn’t slow you down too much.

Now if I am not ready to use those HSTs in a project, I store them in a container in my sewing room. Eventually, I will have enough HSTs to make a pieced border for another quilt or a small table topper.

Using up scraps:

• Now what do you do with the scraps that you really can’t work into a scrap pattern? Like the little container above, I keep one for scraps. A lot of these scraps are ends of strip sets or little pieces from the end of a strip.

Fill it up and then you can use the scraps to stuff an old pillow case to make a pet bed. If you don’t have any pets, check in with your local pet shelter to see if they need a donation of pet beds. 

• As I have covered before, keep scraps in tubs for appliqué pieces if you do fabric appliqué.

Since I have tubs of this scrap fabric in a variety. of colors, I don’t need to cut into a larger piece of fabric for some flower appliqué, for example. I can also use this fabric for sample blocks to test out color combinations without cutting into brand new fabric.

• Finally, save the selvages! You can make one of the fun projects from patterns, that are on the market, to use those up. You can also use them around the house to tie things together or add a bow to a gift for a quilting friend….. or for a cat toy!

Tip #3 – Recycling Items – Pick of the Week

Last week I had a few ideas on taming the bobbins you have in your sewing drawer. I like to wind several bobbins in the thread color I am using for a large project so I can quickly change one out when it’s empty. Here’s a storage idea for those bobbins that recycles an empty pill container.

Another use for a pill container is as a thread tamer! I like to take hand projects on the road or outside on a sunny day, especially binding projects that only take one spool of thread. I use the pill container this way:

Carefully poke a hole in the pill bottle top (left photo). Then place the spool of thread in the bottle, threading the thread through the hole you created in the top. Now you can pull out the amount of thread without the spool getting away from you.

I also use this idea for perle cotton for when I do wool appliqué. Have you seen these little plastic containers in the food saver aisle in the store? I use these to tame my spools of perle cotton while pulling out the amount of thread I want. As with the pill container top, poke a small hole in the top of this container for the thread to feed through.

Fun, right? This is also a good way to keep the cat away from the threads while you are stitching.

If I have a lot of perle cotton colors I need to work with and want to tame the thread I am currently using, consider picking up a school pencil box. You can fit up to eight spools in this box and feed the thread you are using out from under the cover:

The box measures 8 1/2″ x 4″ x 1.6″ with a removable cover. The cover fits just loosely enough so the thread pulls through without snagging.

Random Stuff

• Here’s a few random tips just for fun. Use a small makeup brush to clean out your sewing machine when needed. This is a good tool if your machine didn’t come with a brush or a good replacement if you have lost the brush that came with your machine.

• Use an orange peeler as a stiletto. The advantage to this is the end of the peeler is not super sharp (at least mine isn’t) so there’s less of a chance of it poking a hole in your fabric.

• Use a colored Post-it Note to make your machine needle easier to thread. See the difference when you hold the piece of paper behind your needle?

• Finally this is a safety thing. Use an empty rotary blade container to collect old rotary blades and an empty mechanical pencil lead container to collect old needles. This makes it safer to discard these things when the containers are full because they won’t be floating around in a garbage bag where they can poke through and injure someone.

Well, that’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed my recycling and up-cycling tips. Share some of yours below. Maybe we’ll all learn something new!

Happy Quilting!
Deanne