Green Options

My girls and I tend to craft with scrapbook paper often enough that I buy it when it’s on sale, but not often enough that I tend to use up all the paper that I’ve bought. Coincidentally, I also love photography, long to display my photos more around the house, and loathe store-bought photo frames–it just seems like I’ve sold, donated, given away, or thrown out enough photo frames over my lifetime for various reasons, you know?

Here’s another stash-busting project that I’ve been working hard on this week: covering recycled cardboard with pretty stash scrapbooking paper to use as wall photo frames around the house. The benefits of these photo frames are that they’re cheap, light and easy to mount without a lot of hardware, amenable to a plethora of modifications that will allow you to match your room or express your personality, and quick to make, letting you get as quickly as possible to the point of the project: getting your beautiful artwork out there on your walls.

Fleece isn’t a natural fabric, but it is vegan, is often (although it’s just as often nearly impossible to tell when) partially to completely made from recycled plastic bottles, and has many of the same qualities of wool, in that it’s breathable and wicks moisture away from the skin. It doesn’t readily hold stains, doesn’t ravel, is thin and light and yet soft and plush, and can be washed easily.

It’s one of the staple fabrics that, as a cloth diapering momma, I bought every time it was on sale. Only now? All my babies are toilet trained, and I still have, pardon my French, a butt-load of fleece.

One of the things that I like to do as an eco-friendly crafter and that I like to teach my children as a natural parent is to remember to have respect for our stuff. We should keep only what we can use or enjoy, and we should use and enjoy what we have. Thus I need to either use or lose my fleece stash, and that’s my goal this week.

Fortunately, the same qualities that make fleece an excellent material for cloth diapers also make it an excellent material for a light and comfortable matress pad. Additionally, it comes in a width that’s perfect for my queen-sized bed and workable for my daughters’ full-sized bed, and the sewing on it will be absolutely minimal because fleece doesn’t ravel–just cut it to shape, throw on some elastic, and we’ll be good to go. Here’s how:

GreenSage bills itself as a store for “sustainable building and furnishing.”  As part of that identity, they sell a number of natural, organic, and hemp fabrics - including the 100% hemp print you see here, which unfortunately for the hobby crafter is $50 per yard.

Several times I’ve thought about whether to include a fabric this expensive in the Fabulous Fabrics series?  Is it just to taunt you?  No!  You’re all very nice, and I like you.  I’m also not trying to reinforce the perception that all organic fabric is expensive.  The fact is, fine fabrics and upholstery fabrics are expensive no matter what they’re made of, and we all understand that.

What I am trying to do is celebrate the organic, sustainable, and environmentally friendly fabrics that people are creating, even if most of us aren’t able to consume vast quantities of it.  I think it’s part of building and nurturing a movement to point out successes and hold up even high end examples of what we want products to be like.

And I like to show you pretty things.  You’re o.k. with that, right?

For those of you looking to re-upholster that charming antique love seat set or chaise lounge, and want to do it right, try Rubie Green upholstery fabrics.

Rubie Green (homepage images above) is an eco-upholstery fabric company with the creative philosophy:

“It’s a barefoot walk in the sand; it’s a lazy afternoon nap, and it’s your first sight of the Mediterranean coast. It’s life at its simplest, and nature in its wordless beauty. Here at Rubie Green, our mission is to dress your surroundings in fabrics that represent vitality, energy, comfort and style, all while maintaining respect to the environment by using only 100% organic cotton. We believe in classic designs that are familiar to every decade, re-vitalized in an eco-friendly manner. We know that natural does not mean boring, and that interiors make a house a home.”