Too good to throw away

I have a fairly large stash of ribbons. If there’s a ribbon on a gift, I keep it. If there’s a ribbon decorating a product I’ve bought, I keep it.

While going through the stash recently I found some pieces of pink ribbon, each with a pretty button. They came attached to the price labels on some clothes I bought ages ago. I can’t remember whether the clothes were from Monsoon or Laura Ashley, but presumably the retailer wanted to use something other than plastic to attach the label to the clothing (good work!).

The ribbons were too good to throw away and so into the stash they went. They have now been re-used to hang Christmas tree decorations I’ve made from clay (see the tree on the left for the ribbon/ button combo I mentioned. The other ribbon came from the stash).

Here are two more examples. You can see that the larger decoration got a little scuffed-up after it’d baked, which taught me to be more careful with them! I’m not too worried though, as I doubt the marks will be visible when the decoration is on a tree.

I really enjoy making with clay and I hope to undertake some more projects soon.

Nice threads!

I’ve noticed quite a lot of tapestry thread in my local charity shops lately. I haven’t done any tapestry for years, but I pick the wool when I see it, as it might come in useful at some point.

While I don’t do tapestry at the moment, I am keen on embroidery. I use much thinner, shinier threads in my work, (you can see some examples of my embroideries below).

I may have a go at tapestry again at some point, as I used to love it. In the meantime, does anyone know of any alternative uses for tapestry thread – maybe for hole punch embroidery? If anyone knows, please do let me know.

Looks good enough to eat

I find it’s pretty rare to spot multi-packs of knitting wool in charity shops. Often single balls are on sale – I guess people donate their project leftovers, which is fair enough.

Given that, I was really pleased when a relative found a couple of multi-packs in local charity shops.

One pack contained 3 balls of this yarn, which was enough for me to make a super long, wide scarf.

I love the mix of autumnal shades – it reminds me of a tasty food (a cinnamon roll, or a waffle cone, perhaps?).

The other pack contained 2 balls of this chunky yarn, which reminds me of neapolitan ice cream, (I’m clearly always thinking about food)! I’m in the middle of making another snuggly scarf with the wool.

I best stop typing and have some lunch – maybe then I’ll stop seeing food in my projects!

#Donoteatwool

Stitched up

I did a little bit of ‘make do and mend’ recently, when I embroidered over a hole that had appeared in a blouse. Here are the before and after pics…

I was inspired to embroider a lemon on the blouse as I’d recently embroidered a much larger version of the fruit on a hoop, (pic below).

With sustainability in mind, I’m trying to do my little bit for the environment by not binning clothes that can be fixed-up.