Green Options

Did you know that 95 percent of fabric shoppers make their purchases at chain stores?
That’s where Project 95 comes into the picture. One goal of Project 95 is to unite fabric shoppers with local independent quilt and fabric shops.  

Project 95 is brought to you by The Fabric Shop Network, Inc, the trade association for independent quilt and fabric retailers.  They have recently launched a beta version of a searchable map to help you find independents in your area.  I plugged in my zip code and was delighted to see this densely packed map fraught with new (at least new-to-me) shops to check out in my area.

Filled up with quilt envy after admiring all those gorgeous denim quilts? Sewing your own is not only green, but also easy and inexpensive!

You will need: several old pairs of blue jeans (the exact number depends on the size of quilt you’ll be sewing); cardboard for a cutting template, a marking pen, a sewing machine with a jeans needle inserted, matching thread. To follow along in later posts with backing and tying your quilt, have handy a thrifted yet terrific blanket and embroidery floss or yarn in coordinating colors.

We’ll sew the quilt top today, and back it and tie it in a later post.

I am all about making things last around my household.  If I can turn a bunch of men’s ties into a skirt, I’m as giddy as a little kid on Christmas.  Where one might see something destined to head to the landfill, I see a plethora of craft ideas just waiting for me to get started on.

My favorite double duty craft is the t-shirt quilt.  I readily admit that I love t-shirts, and I buy a lot of them at any given time, which means that I grow out of them pretty quickly.  I started saving shirts that I wasn’t going to wear anymore, and instead of chucking them out the door I collected them by theme and color.  After a few months of this, I had enough to make a quilt!  It’s super easy, and you don’t have to be a sewing master to make one.  Here’s a few quick and easy tips, and you can be making your own t-shirt quilt.

It wasn’t always that handmade quilts, the work of women who had a lot of other work to do, as well, were considered artwork in their own right. They were used, after all, and used long and hard, not set aside for posterity. If they were hung up, they were hung up to divide up living spaces or provide insulation, not set on a gallery wall. They were created not by professional artists, but by real women for real needs who used as their materials what was at hand.

And yet, handmade quilts are artwork. They are beautiful. And they are now often hung in museums. Here’s an online tour of some of the nicest permanent collections:

I don’t know about you, but Christmas week at my grandparents’ house isn’t exactly a hotbed of activity. Papa does get up at around 5 am, of course, so if I got up, too, I could hang out with him while he sits at the kitchen table and reads the newspaper and drinks coffee for three hours. Then we can move into the den and watch Fox News for a while. We could yell at the dog, watch through the front window to see what the neighbors are up to, and when the postal worker comes, well, we are going to hop up and get that mail RIGHT AWAY. We have to hurry, you know, because if we’re going to go to Western Sizzlin’ for dinner, we have to be there by 4:45 pm at the latest.

Yeah.

So you may not be surprised that while my Papa watches Fox News all day, I putter. This is where I found the million of Christmas cards from people we’re not even related to anymore and got permission to upcycle them into gift tags. One time I found a bunch of my Mama’s really old resin record albums and ripped them all to my computer. I dug around in the attic until I found all my old Strawberry Shortcake dolls and Transformers and He-Man guys (remember this dude? He’s my favorite).

And then, a couple of days ago, I found the quilts.

Printed fabric can be fun for most any projects. But sometimes having a nice solid really helps put your design over the top. Marcus Fabrics offers a small line of organic cotton solids perfect for home decor projects. The line is 100% certified organic cotton and is dyed with eco-friendly dyes.

Oasis Canvas comes in 21 bright colors. Each color bound to be perfect for any quilting or sewing work in progress. The jewel tones seem to really pop.

Understanding that environmental stewardship is not only good for your craft projects, Marcus Fabrics is also turning their sites on they way they do business.

So there I was, looking through the HempTraders website.  Ah yes, I said to myself, they have all kinds of hemp and hemp blends.  Hemp knits, hemp stretch fabrics, hemp linen and muslin, hemp canvas, and even hemp / silk blends and satins.  They have hemp upholstery fabric too.

Some of the fabrics are as low as $7.25 per yard, some as high as $20, and as I’ve come to expect with hemp, I’m seeing mostly solid colors.  HempTraders has a wider variety of fabrics all in one place than some of the other online shops I’ve covered, and the photographs of the fabrics are exceedingly clear.

“But what’s a specialty weave?” I thought, and clicked on that link.

Now I am obsessed with the idea of sewing up little boy pajamas.

Once again, I must give credit to the wonderful Kim of fabric blog True Up for introducing me to an eco-friendlier fabric.  The Andover Vegetable Dyes collection of cottons isn’t made from organic cotton, but it addresses the other side of the green fabric equation: the materials used in dyeing.

Leslie here at Crafting A Green World has talked to us about non-toxic dyeing using natural materials.  This collection is a larger scale equivalent of Leslie using her landlady’s plums to cook up some pretty fabric.

The collection is carried by Z&S Fabrics and Strawberry Patches, and the latter of which has some background information about the collection that is not found on Andover’s website. 

So far in the Fabulous Fabrics series, I’ve been looking at offerings from independent designers as well as specialty online shops. We’ve seen organic cotton, recycled fleece, hemp, and other fabrics that try to step more lightly on our common home.

That’s great for people reading this blog and other green crafting blogs, but large scale change is going to require many, many crafters demanding organic and other earth-friendly products. If all the products are sequestered in little green boutiques, that’s going to be a slow process. What about the crafters who aren’t reading this blog? Do they know these products exist? Have any of these products gone mainstream? I went on a hunt through some of the biggest mainstream fabric shops’ websites to find out.

It is hard to talk about stuffing and not talk about batting. They are practically the same material, except the former is loose and used for pillows and plushes and the later is formed into flat layers perfect for quilting.

Like the world of plushes and softies, quilting is another craft that I have been keeping an eye on, but have yet to fully try out. The concept seems easy enough, but I’ve never been very patient and can’t quite get the whole measure twice, cut once, thing down. A friend of mine recently made me a quilt and I am in awe of the time and talent that she put into it.

Quilting is definitely on the move in the crafting world and quickly becoming the hip craft to do. The exploding popularity of Amy Butler and Denyse Schmidt have propelled this craft into the lime light and it is easy to see why.