Monday, December 29, 2008

Frugal Decluttering

Two of the things a new year always inspires me to do are to be more frugal and to declutter. Why not combine the two?

My son has way too many clothes in his closet, most of which he never wears. I was looking through there Saturday and noticed that there were several pairs of jeans that were so worn out, they needed to be thrown away. However, the backs of the legs were in great condition. Can't say the same for the knees and hems!




I recently bought a new Scrap Quilting Book by Bonnie Hunter called "Scraps & Shirttails: Reuse, Re-purpose, Recycle! The Art of "Quilting Green"". I love this book because it shows how to re-purpose old clothing into beautiful quilts. This is not new to me, as I've made a couple of blue jean quilts in the past. But it does give me some ideas for more quilts.



This is the stack of denim fabric I had when I finished cutting out the good parts of my son's jeans, as well as some more articles of denim clothing that I purchased at a thrift shop, just to reuse in my sewing. A small church run thrift store located in a small town near me has a quarterly "39 cents sale". Everything in the store, except large appliances and furniture, is 39 cents. I take advantage of this sale to purchase denim clothing or men's cotton shirts.

As Bonnie advises in her book, I plan to go ahead and cut these pieces of denim into usable strips and organize them into containers. Being organized makes sewing much more fun and saves lots of time and money.

When I got through cutting up these old jeans I had a garbage bag full of leftover scraps to be thrown in the garbage. I plan to continue on my crusade to declutter my son's closet and to increase my quilting fabric stash too!

2 comments:

Terri said...

What a great idea! I never thought to do that with my son's jeans.

Susan said...

I've wanted to try making a denim quilt for a while, and have some jeans saved for that. I need to cut them up now and get them ready to use! Thanks for the motivation and inspiration!

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