About My --------- Upcycled Potholders!

 I thought I'd write a series of posts here about the things I sell in my shop DebUpcycles. Answering questions like... Why they're upcycled, how they're upcycled, what materials I use, and where I get the fabric. I don't have any big trade secrets so here it goes.

I'm going to start with my denim potholders. People, mostly men but some women (including me) wear their jeans until they're falling apart.

 Most thrift shops don't put these out, although I wish they would, so I go to the Goodwill Outlet here where they sell all the items not good enough for the stores by the pound. I also find some at yard sales where they'll either be very cheap or (awesome!) in the "free" box.

I also find scraps of cotton batting, leftovers from some ones quilt project, at various places.



 In the first potholders pictured I used scraps of denim in another shade to make the hearts and outlined them with machine stitching in red so they would stand out. In the picture above, you can see the outline of the stitching on the back of the potholder. For the ones on the left, the apples were cut from scraps I had leftover from making a pillow out of a mans shirt which was also found at the Goodwill Outlet, the leaves were just scraps I had picked up somewhere.
Everything except the thread is upcycled or used up from scraps, if I run out of something like the cotton batting I don't go running to a regular retail store for more. I just make something else until I find it again.

I love the challenge of finding ways to use the things I buy to their fullest extent. Even the scraps that are too small for anything else end up in pincushions or my compost pile as long as they're natural fibers.

Remember, we only have one Earth, it's time to start taking care of it.

Cleaning Out the Craft Room

I wish I had taken before pictures but I'm not even done and it still looks pretty bad. LOL I spent all of Tuesday sorting out all the stuff I had. I found a ton of things I was going to make pillow covers out of and I guess I need to start cutting them out and sewing them together for my Deb Upcycles shop. I also found a lot of fabric and lace that I'm already listing on Deb's Crafts.

I have three bags of fabric scraps and other items to go to The Upcycle Exchange here in St Louis and another couple bags that need to go to Leftovers, which is a 30 minute drive but I try to get there on a regular basis. As well as all that, I have a bagful of stuff to go to the thrift shop across the street. I don't like to see anything go to waste.

I still have an outrageous amount of patterns that I need to list on Deb's Patterns but I am slowly whittling away the pile.

Busy, busy week.