Tag: sewing

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Eco-friendly clothing: links roundup

Juliet Kemp

Over at A Little Bit of All Of It, it’s eco-friendly clothing week! In honour of which, here is a round-up of various links and so on from me and elsewhere, on the subject of eco-friendly clothing.

Upcycling

Upcycling existing clothes that you no longer wear is an eco-friendly way of getting new clothes. I haven’t up cycled anything for myself lately, but I have been upcycling a T-shirt of mine (no longer wearable into a T-shirt for Leon. A skirt I don’t wear became a pair of baby trousers last summer; they’re still being worn this summer, just as three-quarter length rather than full length. I also made a pair of smart trousers from some suit trousers recently, but haven’t yet blogged it.

Not clothes, but I made toys from scraps from my scrap box earlier this year, too.

Making clothes from fabric

How eco-friendly it is to make your own clothes (if not upcycling) depends on how eco-friendly the source fabric is. Although you could argue that making your own makes you more likely to wear and appreciate the garment, rather than treating it as disposable; it may also last longer and you might be more likely to patch it.

Here’s a few sources of eco-friendly fabric, or yarn:

  • Organic Cotton do eco-friendly (organic, also fair trade) cotton and other materials, and deliver very fast. I’ve used them personally and can recommend them.
  • The Hemp Shop do hemp fabric, which is organic. It’s not fair trade but they do give their factory working conditions on that page.
  • There are several sorts of yarn which is recycled from other yarns or fabrics:
    • Recycled sari silk: can be a bit odd to knit with, though, and doesn’t knit a smooth fabric.
    • Second Time Cotton: recycled from consumer cotton scraps. Nice to knit with, but sadly I can’t find a UK stockist at the moment.
    • Full Circle worsted and bulky wool is also made from leftover bits of British wools. It’s 100% wool, very snuggly, and nice to knit with. It’s a bit scratchy but only in the way that wool is often a bit scratchy.

You can also knit multi-coloured things from your end-balls of yarn; blankets are another way to use up ends of balls.

Shopping

Finally, if you’re buying, start out with charity shops or Ebay second-hand clothes (as well as promoting reuse, this is also much cheaper!). If you’re buying new, look for organic and fair trade, and be prepared (sadly) to spend a while at it, as it can be difficult to find both. Once you do, make your clothes last as long as possible by washing them only when they’re actually dirty, protecting them when you’re doing dirty chores (get an apron!), and patching them if possible.

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Up-cycled baby T-shirt

Juliet Kemp

I have a stack of old T-shirts in my fabric box waiting to be turned into baby shirts (ones that are no longer fit for adult use but have enough good fabric in them to be worth chopping up), and this week made my first attempt, with an old Belle and Sebastian shirt. Lots of pictures after the cut.

Continue reading “Up-cycled baby T-shirt” →

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Travel busy bag for a 10 month old

Juliet Kemp

We travel by train quite a bit, and Leon is getting beyond the age where just waving my keys in front of him will distract him. Today I constructed a travel busy bag for him, with ideas from a couple of places online.

I made two quilted texture cards: one pieced from differently-textured scraps from my scrap box, the other from a curtain sample. One of them has buttons on one side, and a zip and a suspender clasp (it was kicking around in the bottom of my bits box & I thought he’d like it) on the other. The second has little scraps of fabric of different types sewn onto it, secured only at one end so they all flap like little tags.

Two quilted 'cards' with bits sewn onto them

The other side of the 'cards', one with buttons, one with fabric tags

My new headphones have a carrying bag, but I won’t use it, so I used it to hold a bunch of twisted metallic pipecleaners, and a small string of beads, in, for taking in & out & playing with. (Though he’ll need help with the bag.)

I threaded beads onto another pipecleaner, and a metal spring and split ring I found in my bits bag onto a second one.

Busy bag pieces all spread out

(The pencilcase to hold it all also came from my box of bits. The carabiner clasp visible there I ditched in the end.) I also tucked in a couple of bits of card, one for folding/playing with, and one with the names of a handful of nursery rhymes & songs written on, for those moments when my brain goes blank.

Small zippered bag, with pen-holders on the front

All zipped up and ready to go! When Leon’s a bit older, I could tuck a couple more bits of paper in, and a couple of pencils into the front pen-holder part. (And, of course, swap out a bunch of the activities for something else.) You can’t see in that photo, but there’s a piece of ribbon attached to the zipper, and most of the activities have a ribbon loop on them, so I can tie the ribbon through the loop while Leon’s playing with them, and hopefully spend less time fishing under the seat for something he’s dropped.

It was fun to make, came entirely of bits and bobs I had lying around, and didn’t take that long. Now we need to go somewhere to test it out!

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From skirt to (baby) trousers

Juliet Kemp

Another round of decluttering recently unearthed a skirt that I made for myself many years ago, but have never actually worn. After seeing two posts about upcycled baby trousers, one from a T-shirt and one from trousers, I thought I’d see if my skirt could become a pair of trousers for Leon.

I used an existing pair of cotton trousers to cut a pattern. As with the above posts, I cut them with the side seams on the existing side seam of the skirt, and the bottom hem on the skirt’s hem. No need to repeat work already done.

Baby trousers look very long from crotch to waistband, especially if (as here) you need to fit them over a cloth nappy.

denim material on desk, one leg of trousers cut and being used as pattern for second leg
First leg being used to cut out second leg.

Next, I pinned and sewed the front and back seams, and the crotch seam.

Pieces of trousers pinned together along front and back seam, ready to sew

Front and back seam sewn, trousers pinned together to sew crotch seam

They looked pretty good already at this stage. The beaded decoration was already on the old skirt (I’ll take it off if Leon gets too interested in it as I’m not sure how secure it is.)

Trousers turned right-way-out, waistband still unfinished. Dark stretchy denim with beaded decoration on front left leg

I pinned and sewed a waistband, with plenty of room to feed some elastic through.

Trousers inside out again, inch-thick waistband pinned ready to sew, with white pin marking for centre front

Note pin marking the place at the front of the trousers where I was going to leave a gap for the elastic to be fed in through.

Waistband of trousers, right way out, gathered with elastic threaded through, unfinished at front

Waistband sewn and elastic threaded through on a safety pin and pinned to what I thought was the right length.

Elasticated trousers aren’t that much of a fashion statement, but they’re the easiest to get on over a baby bottom, having as they do no fastenings to do up while the baby is trying to crawl away from you. I checked the tightness of the elastic on Leon, then cut the elastic, took a few stitches to hold the ends together, and hand-sewed the gap in the waistband shut.

Sleeping baby on bed, wearing new dark denim trousers and white/blue/green stripy top
Sleeping baby, new trousers!

I’m pleased with that bit of upcycling, which took maybe half an hour all in, and may be repeating it with a pair of worn-out trousers currently lurking in the fabric box.