Green Options

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Inspired by the first Carnival of Green Crafts and Yoel’s attempt at stashbusting I took a closer look at my yarn stash and encourage you to do the same.

There’s a reason you bought all that yarn in the first place, right? I know there is a plethora of your very own yearn worthy yarn, just sitting in your house waiting to be picked up and turned into an amazing project. Whether its a sturdy cotton blend, a fancy novelty yarn, or any one of the numerous environmentally friendly yarns we like to tell you about, your stash is a wonderful wealth of fiber. So use it!

Consumption is a sometimes tricky issue to tackle, because no one wants to be told that we buy too much stuff. But we do and we need to be doing less. Earlier this month I had the chance to hear Diane MacEachern, author of Big Green Purse speak on her book, consumption and purchasing power.

Whether a farmer, designer, or shopper, tagua nuts are gems from nature to treasure. Especially crafts people love to enhance their creativity with tagua.

Ah silk. It is such a luxurious fiber; cool and soft to the touch. It has an unmistakable feel that you always know when something is made of silk.

To become the silk that we know and love, this fiber has a very interesting story.

Silk comes from the cocoon of the Bombyx moth. Before turning into a moth the Bombyx caterpillar spins itself a cocoon of 1000 yards of silky fiber to house itself during the transformation. The caterpillar secretes a substance that is a thin but strong strand of fiber, which is what we know as silk.

Gossypium is an independent online shop based in the UK that makes clothing, bedding, and accessories that are fair trade and environmentally friendly. Their Ethical and Eco Practices page is a model for any textile business. Luckily for crafters, they also offer some of their fabrics by the yard.

Their organic cotton fabrics are fair trade certified, and printed using water based ink. They have two different kinds of fabric: a woven shirting weight fabric that’s 240 cm wide, and an interlock fabric sold in 160 cm width. The interlock is the prints, which are all kiddo friendly: bugs, farm, puppies, and the jungle print shown here. The woven fabrics are a denim stripe, three checks, and a natural, recommended for bedding, curtains, and clothing.

Kirin & Co is the online shop of designer and textile artist Lara Cameron of Melbourne, Australia. Cameron produces limited edition, hand screen printed fabrics as well as handmade items such as super-fab clutch purses.

Cameron prints on two types of fabrics: a cotton/linen blend printed with environmentally friendly inks, and a new hemp/organic cotton blend. The cotton/linen blend isn’t as green as we usually look for in the Fabulous Fabrics series, but Cameron is definitely making efforts to green her fabrics and we respect that. It isn’t always easy or possible to green everything overnight!

I’m a big sucker for silver jewelry. I don’t often wear very much of it, but every once in a while I come across a piece that I absolutely love and must have. In a store, that I found this past week, was a basket full of rings. Not just any rings, but rings made from old cutlery; rings made from the ends of spoons and the tines of forks.

I [...]

Steampunk, a genre combining future living with the romance of the Victorian era, started to come to prominence in the 1980’s. Influenced by fantasy and science fiction writing, and inventions for time-travel by H. G. Wells, steampunk has started to trickle into the mainstream in recent years.

It has gone beyond being relegated to the novel and expanded into all other aspects of art and design, making its way into fashion as well. The style is most often characterized by the use of found and repurposed objects, open circuitry and exposed gear cogs. There is also a blog devoted to all things steampunk called The Steampunk Workshop.

The mentality of do-it-yourself that is pervasive within steampunk is what helps this aesthetic cross into green culture. The clothes, jewelry and modded phones and computers are all created with vintage or thrifted items to achieve the proper “look.”

To spread the word about the need for meaningful climate action and motivate our elected officials that we need to act now to solve global climate change, Bill McKibben, of Step It Up fame, has stepped it up himself with his new organization 350.org.

350.org is spreading the word far and wide about the importance of the number 350 and you can help! Together with Craftster, Etsy, Craft Magazine, Burda Style and Thrifty Fun — 350.org has launched the Creativity 350 partnership and contest to draw creative energy and attention to 350.org’s goal of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million to stave off dangerous climate change.

The contest is in two parts; a 350-themed craft contest and a 350-themed T-shirt design contest. For the craft contest, you are invited to craft any project that creatively expresses the importance of the number 350, using any crafting technique. For the T-shirt contest, you may create an original T-shirt design that creatively expresses the importance of the number 350.

We’ve already covered the mysteries of fusing plastic, but did you also know that you can knit with it too?! To continue my what to do with my overflowing bag of plastic bags kick, here is a quick tutorial on making your own plastic yarn or “plarn.”

1) Gather your bags. I separated mine by color, but why not go crazy and mix and match?

2) Start by cutting off the handles and the bottom of the bag. The result will be a nice smooth rectangle, as the bottom gatherings will have been removed.

Raise your hand if you’re like me and have an overflowing bag of plastic shopping bags?

Ok, good. That’s just about everyone.

Raise your hand if you try and reuse them for random things like other trash bags and carrying lunch to work?

Great! I think that’s still a good chunk of you.

Now, raise your hand if you still have all these bags and still don’t know what to do with them but refuse to throw them away?

Yup, that’s what I thought.

Well you’re in luck because this week I am going to explore a bit about what to do with all those plastic bags. I’ve already told you about Conserve, a wonderful company that employs rag pickers in India to pick up plastic bags and then uses the bags to create the most amazing purses and totes. I’ve always wondered how to make bags out of plastic and knew that it involved fusing plastic together, but that’s about it. So I started to do a bit of research into what it take to do it yourself.

From the looks of these three tutorials it seems pretty simple. All you really need to fuse plastic are your plethora of plastic bags, an iron, freezer paper, parchment paper or other scrap paper, and a well ventilated area.

Let’s see, how to introduce a list of my favorite green crafting blogs that aren’t us? Hmm.

“More ways to spend time on the internet instead of working.” Probably true, but slightly too cheeky.

“More ways to spend time on the internet instead of crafting.” Again, probably true, or maybe I’m just projecting my personal issues?

How about: “These are cool, you should read them!”

Slightly dull, but honestly I’m a bit tired today and that may be as good as it gets. So without further ado, here are some of my personal favorite green craft blogs, big and small. Check out our blogroll for more, and feel free to add your suggestions in the comments!