Green Options

It is always exciting to make a new, fun discovery in the eco world and my latest is Amy Butler Design.  Amy designs fabric, patterns, stationery and other Midwest modern accessories for you and your home.  Actually, she has been doing this for some time and has graced many magazines and websites.  But upon further investigation, you really could get yourself lost in her world.

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’ve been posting lately about the treasure of beautiful, hand-sewn vintage quilts that I found in my Mama’s house, and the shocking conditions in which they’d been stored: stuffed in a closet, stuffed in a garbage bag, with MOTHBALLS! Another that my mother had put aside for me was folded up, hung on a HANGER, and then stuffed inside a garbage bag.

The quilts were all visibly worn-looking, weak, and discolored along their fold lines. On my Nana’s friendship quilt, some of the color of the embroidery that served as the signature of the women who pieced the quilt had bled onto other parts of the quilt that they’d been shoved against for thirty years. The quilt on the hanger is in the worst shape–the plastic had stuck to it in a few spots (it’s a nine-patch my Nana made in the 1970s, out of polyester), and it didn’t really want to completely unfold anymore. I have a master’s in library science that focuses on archival management, and I sew, and y’all? I FREAKED. OUT.

The thing is, my family doesn’t hate these quilts and want them to die. The recognize that these quilts are works of art, loving legacies from women long gone from us, and records of our ancestry, and they very much want to treasure them and preserve them for future generations–they were just doing an ass job of it.

Here’s how to not be such an ass.

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.

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.

Sometimes I get rid of fabric.

Shocking, right? Fabric is meant to be hoarded, right? But honestly, though those old pastel celestial prints might be useful for insulating my house or making my fridge run more efficiently, I am so over the stars thing and I am never going to use this stuff.

My local quilt guild takes donations of kid-friendly and soldier-friendly fabrics for various community service projects, but what if you don’t have a guild nearby? And more importantly, is there anything I can do to find a new life for the perfectly good yarn that I often see abandoned in thrift stores and at garage sales?

Here are five organizations that accept donations of craft supplies. Feel free to add more in the comments. I’ve tried to stick to permanent organizations instead of individuals or temporary efforts, and this list contains only organizations where I could confirm they accept donations. (There are hundreds upon hundreds of organizations listed all over the web, and hundreds of websites, but many of them no longer exist.)

In Part 1 of How Safe and Green Are Your Crafting Supplies?, I went on a quest to find out about the safety of my test case crafting product, fusible web. (As you’ll recall, it’s a synthetic product that’s like a cross between fabric and glue, and it works as an adhesive when you iron it.)

Though I was not 100% reassured by what I found, there are at least some safety regulations in place for arts and craft supplies, and fusible web does meet those standards. So let’s move on to my next challenge: assess the environmental impact.

The environmental impact of many products is pretty evident. Oil is a non-renewable resource and it creates toxins when you burn it, so I think it’s a no-brainer to bubble in “No” on the sustainability question in the answer booklet. Bottled water exchanges an efficient public delivery system for an inefficient private one and creates a massive pile of barely recyclable containers.

Fusible web, though, isn’t as immediately apparent to me. Obviously, any product that is manufactured (unless it’s Cradle to Cradle certified, Autumn reminded me) uses up resources and thus isn’t as environmentally benign as going without or re-using something that was already made. But beyond the issues posed by using any manufactured product, is there anything else going on with fusible web that is praiseworthy or less so?

Several years ago, I was working on a baby quilt from a book of designs inspired by Amish quilts. The pattern I was using included an applique border which I was going to skip because my hand stitches look awful. I was intrigued by a note that the author had included, though, about how traditional Amish quilts rarely include applique. The technique of applique was believed to be wasteful of fabric.

It turns out that wise use of resources is a hallmark of Amish quilts even beyond avoidance of applique. The Quilter’s Ultimate Visual Guide has this to say about Amish quilts:

Most quilts contain bits of fabric left over after dresses and shirts have been made for the family [...] Mitered borders are rarely used, since they require more fabric. In keeping true to their faith, the quilts the Amish make are simple in design and fulfill a utilitarian need of providing warmth.