According to the EPA, an average American throws away roughly 65 pounds of textiles every year. I have no idea how they come up with that number, or how accurate it truly is, but if so, that is disturbing. Continuing on with the statistics, of the roughly 13.1 million tons of textiles thrown out, only about 15% (or 2 million tons) are recovered for recycling or reuse. However, nearly half of what is thrown out is perfectly useable.

Part of what I love to do when sewing  is find ways to reuse old clothing items. Many of the clothes I make for my daughters are from clothes that either my husband or I were planning on getting rid of. I also adore thrift store shopping, so I take any excuse I can get to wander the aisles and look for interesting fabrics and materials. While I have been feeling pretty good about reusing, one thing I am still challenging myself to do more is find creative ways to cut down on the amount of waste that I create.

Every project will have some sort of residual waste. If I were to throw out all of my scraps, my personal textile waste would be phenomenal. Even the little bits from just working at the sewing machine fill up my waste basket with odd bits of scraps and pieces fairly quickly. It doesn’t seem like a big deal until Hazel, who is already a major dumpster diver, tips the trash can over and starts eating and trailing bits of fabric nuggets all around the house. While I tell myself I’m doing pretty well on keeping waste to a minimum, I still like to challenge myself to get use out of virtually every piece that I can. The following is a break-down of a typical project for me and where all of the odds and ends go to use:

1. These are the main pieces of fabric that I have cut from one of my patterns. If I have plenty of fabric left, I’ll simply roll it back up to use again for the next project. When there are odd shapes of fabric or just not enough left to make an entire outfit, I’ll usually save the largest pieces to create bonnets, then move on from there with the small pieces.

2. Ribbon. I love love love making raw-edged fabric ribbon. I have always loved ribbon and have kept it around the house for packaging or using in the girls’ hair. As I have opened my shop, I have gotten a lot pickier about the ribbon I use. My current favorites are silk, velvet, grosgrain or high-quality satin ribbons. With the exception of grosgrain, none of these are available in local craft stores, and they can very quickly get expensive, so I like to save them for clothing items or special occasions. It was only recently that I realized how quickly and easily I could turn scraps from my projects into ribbon. Now I have the option to use this for customer packaging, as sashes on dresses, ties on headbands and bonnets, in addition to regular use for wrapping gifts at home. Even better, it is so much prettier than anything I can find in the shops. The neutral ribbons look so pretty on paper mache boxes, and I love using the floral prints with any of my solid color tissue paper that I wrap the items in. I am starting to have lots of it around, though, so I have been toying with the idea of wrapping surplus ribbon around some spools and including it as a cheap item in the shop.

3. Hair bows and fabric tape. Cutting small bits of fabric into rectangles for hair bows is one of the original ways I started trying to cut back on fabric waste. Before I opened my shop, I had planned on just selling headbands and hair bows. Ambitiously, I cut out probably hundreds of these little rectangles and in my mind I imagined them flying off the virtual shelves. I am pretty glad I ultimately opted to sell my clothing as my main thing instead. I still include a few headbands in the shop, but I mostly love to use these as thank you gifts for customers and will try to customize them to coordinate with the outfit they purchased. I also like to use small strips of fabric to turn into fabric tape for packaging.

4. Fabric cards. This is one of my newest ideas. I like to write a personal thank you to every customer. It really does mean so much to me that individuals seek my shop out and support it, despite the fact that there are so many bigger, cheaper places they could choose to buy clothing for their children. The very least I can do is let them know how very grateful I am for their support. I have always loved stationary and have kept an embarrassing box of cards that moves from home to home with us. I finally put those cards to use writing thank-you notes, but recently started running out of ones that went well with my items. I began to keep an eye out for cards or card stock to make new ones, but wasn’t happy with any of the choices I could find. One day on a whim I decided to add a little stiffener to some of my fabric scraps, and it worked perfectly! Now I simply keep a stack of fabric cards on hand to write my little notes on.

5. Packing bits. Now we’re getting to the nitty-gritty nuggets of fabric left. I still like to keep these on hand in freezer bags sorted by colors, and I will use these for packing in lieu of peanuts or shredded paper. I feel like it goes well with the rest of my brand, and again, it simplifies things by not having to buy more items. This is another thing I’m thinking about adding to the shop, just as I have so much of it around. I am thinking I might make little drawstring bags and sell them for a song to anyone who would like a creative alternative to typical packing shreds.

6. Leftover string. Okay. Now I’m getting a little crazy here. However, these little threads are what is leftover from cleaning up the raw-edged ribbon, and believe it or not…these piles of thread can add up. I typically peel these loose threads off the sides of the ribbon, and they come off three or four at a time. While I am pulling, I simply will wrap the large chunks of thread around mini-spools, and then use them for tying the packages together.

7. What is left. This tiny amount of string  is typically all that is left at the end of a project. Now I can happily let this bit of trash go and feel good about using putting almost every other spare piece to use.

 

The end result: packages of handmade clothing ready to ship out, utilizing scraps from the projects themselves. Please let me know what you think or if you have other great ideas for ways you have found to reuse ordinary things in your own life!