Green Options

After I saw this I decided there is no way I am letting my husband donate his old dress shirts to Goodwill ever again.  At least not until I have made a dress shirt quilt for my son.  How endearing for a son to have a quilt made from his father’s dress shirt?  Repurposed denim quilts always seemed a little too country for my tastes, but a dress shirt quilt can be as modern as the shirts used to make it.

Today is World AIDS Day. A day that is commemorated every December 1 to remind the citizens of the world that while great progress has been made in this epidemic, there is still a long way to go.

Art and craft has played a big role in both bringing awareness about the disease and how to cope. One of the most prominent displays of craft is the AIDS quilt.

Made up of individual “squares” that memorialize those who have been lost to the disease, the AIDS quilt is the largest on going community arts project in the world. It holds more than 44,000 individual panels made by friends, family and loved ones. And the 91,000 plus names displayed on the quilt, represent only 17.5 % of U.S. AIDS deaths.

Plover Organic is primarily a bedding company, but they sell some of their fabrics by the yard.  Are they green, you ask?  Well, just check out their credentials:

All organic fibers used by Plover are certified according to the standards of the Organic Trade Association (OTA) in the United States, and by those of IFOAM and SKAL internationally.

Plover’s method of dyeing conforms fully to the American Organic Fiber Processing Standards (AOFPS) recognized by the OTA, as well as the Oeko-Tex 100 Standard and that of the Environmental Technology Advancement Directorate (ETAD) recognized in Europe.

Plover Organic’s linens are certified by Oeko-Tex and by GOTS.

Though no certification is mentioned for fair trade, they also support and say they practice fair trade principles.

Welcome to the first Carnival of Green Crafts!

For more information about the Carnival, please see the Carnival of Green Crafts home page here at Crafting A Green World.

We’re pleased as punch to announce that the next Carnival will be August 9th at BlogHer, courtesy of Hobbies, Crafts & DIY Contributing Editor Debra Roby. Send in your posts via the carnival submission form today!

Thanks so much to all the crafters who shared their posts with us for this Carnival.  Let’s dig in!

Tenfold Organic Textiles bills themselves as “specialists in providing naturally dyed organic cotton products.” In addition to towels and women and men’s clothing, they also sell their organic fabrics by the yard. Tenfold Organic Textiles was founded in January 2006 to provide organic fabric to consumers, manufacturers, and retailers.

Their fabric is a 200 thread count plain weave cotton, which they recommend for quilts, clothing, and bedding. Currently the only fabric colors available are solids: madder red, pom orange, myra yellow, kasam olive, ash pink, bark brown, soot black, and sun white.

I know, I know, it’s like we’re obsessed with denim around here. Gavin showed us how to patch our jeans if we’re not ready to let them go, then Leslie showed us how to recycle a pair into a sexy miniskirt and use the leftovers to make a shopping bag. (Personally, I’m waiting for Gavin to upcycle HIS jeans into a miniskirt…)

My favorite jeans have finally died, and before I saw Gavin’s post I was planning to start a denim quilt. Denim quilts are heavy duty for picnics and playing on at the park, and I was just at Goodwill this past weekend so I’m inspired by the availability of cheap denim that needs a second chance at life.

Then I started to think about my “dead” jeans from a green point of view. The mantra Reduce, Reuse, Recycle doesn’t include the word “repair,” but it probably should. Reducing is best, reusing or repairing is good, recycling is a last resort. I had decided to recycle my jeans rather than repair them because I had this notion that patched jeans look “run down.” It’s like I’ve been trained by society that if a repair is visible, it makes the garment worthless.

Let’s get serious, people. I am a stay-at-home / work-at-home mother of an eight month old baby. I spend most of my waking hours in my own house. I get spit up on a lot. I crawl around on the floor to retrieve pacifiers and toys. Who the heck is going to put me on What Not To Wear for sporting a pair of patched jeans? I thrifted a “new” pair to replace them for going out, but if I can get more life out of the old ones, why not do it? Also, that way the new ones won’t be worn every day and they’ll last longer for occasions nicer than than cleaning pureed sweet potato out of someone’s hair.

I’m not saying that I’m going to spend all day in clothes I hate in order to be green, but I think it’s time for me to fight my way out of the trap that equates repaired with flawed.

At this point you may be thinking “Um, excuse me, wasn’t the title of this post DENIM QUILTS?”

Yes! Even though my favorite jeans aren’t going to be included, I still want to make a denim quilt.

In Kelly’s recent post Tools To Use: Batting, she outlined several organic and sustainable choices for quilt batting - including my favorite, Hobbs Heirloom Organic Cotton Batting. Kelly was curious, though, about re-using old blankets or sheets instead.

Being creative with your quilt ingredients is part of the history of quilting. Now granted, many of the choices that early quilters made were due to economic constraints. I suspect that if the pioneers had sewing machines and fabric shops readily and affordably available, a lot of them would have taken advantage of those options. However, quilting does have a historical ethic of conservation and re-use. Quilters today manifest this ethic through the obsessive saving of fabric scraps too small for any reasonable project, “just in case.”

So if you’re willing to look past batting, there are other earth-friendly alternatives for your quilt’s insides. Your linen closet, thrift stores, or donations from other people’s sewing supplies may provide just what you need.

As you may already know, April is Use What You Have Month in the craft-o-sphere. Started by crafter Toni at her blog Simple Sparrow in 2006, this challenge asks crafters of all types to take 31 days and rediscover the treasures in their stashes instead of heading to the store.

(Yes, your stash. The one over there. Don’t bother closing the closet door or standing in front of it, we still know it’s there.)

Over 4,700 photos in the Use What You Have Flickr group demonstrate that this idea has caught on. Sometimes being green means supporting companies and artisans that are producing sustainable, beautiful materials. Sometimes, though, it means taking a break from accumulating more stuff and using the time to create something beautiful.

How can quilters spend the month of April? I’m glad you asked! Here are my picks for the Top 5 “Use What You Have” quilting ideas:

I have never met a woman who loves shopping for jeans. Finding a pair of jeans that fits can involve endless shopping trips, trying on pair after pair in the unflattering light of dressing rooms. Even in low-rise styles, finding the right hip to waist ratio can be maddening. But if rips or patches don’t really fit into your personal style and your current jeans are falling apart, at some point you have to bite the bullet and shop.

Once you replace the well-worn pair of jeans, though, what’s next? Since I’m currently facing the demise of my favorite (and only) pair of jeans, I thought I would take a spin around the web and see what I could do with them.

First up is this recycled blue jean organizer, perfect for craft supplies.

eInsider is the “electronic newsletter for the quilting and soft crafts industry” by Quilts Inc., the company which produces the International Quilt Festivals. The article Green Quilting: Improving the Earth One Fiber at a Time appeared a while back, though I didn’t find it until now. It profiles a variety of green crafting issues in quilting and beyond.

I did have a couple of bones to pick with the article, but there were also quite a few good things that were new to me.

First, the Green Quilts Project, founded by Susan Shie, encouraged quilters to make quilts from 1989 to 2004 to send healing energy to the Earth. I had never heard of this effort before. I also didn’t know about Mountain Mist’s Eco Craft batting, fiberfill, and pillowforms, which are made from corn fiber.

The Aurora Silk website offers natural dyes and great tutorials for using them. And it was good to see a mention of Betz White’s delicious recycled wool sweater crafts and her book Warm Fuzzies, which always make me want to buy every wool sweater within a 10 mile radius and start felting them.