Lora’s partner passed away several years ago and I made this bag for her out of his old clothes. Her partner was a woodworker who made bentwood boxes that joined in front using the pattern on this bag. Lora lent me some of his old plexiglass templates so that I could copy the pattern exactly. …
Tag Archives: recycled
Handwoven Flatcap
The fabric of this wool flatcap was woven on a rigid heddle loom. Warp yarns were bits and ends left over from various knitting projects, while the weft was recycled sweater yarn. The lining was made from a silk shirt.
Handwoven Wool Blanket
This blanket was woven in three separate panels on a rigid heddle loom and stitched together. All yarn was unraveled from thrift store sweaters and dyed using various natural dyes. Also featured in this image is the recycled-bedsheet braided carpet.
Upcycled Chevron Dress
This dress was awarded 3rd place in Fashion Revolution Canada’s 2023 Student Upcycling Contest. This was one of my favourite sewing projects to date – I was tasked with turning at least two old shirts into a dress. I happened to have two corduroy shirts at home already, and scrounged up two pairs of corduroy …
Sliding Tiles Blanket
When I first started learning how to use natural dyes, I split about three recycled sweaters’ worth of yarn into 20g skeins so that I could dunk them into whatever dyes I wanted to experiment with. After about a year or so of that, I figured I had to do something with all those sample …
Braided rug with recycled textiles
It’s been a while since the last carpet and I somehow convinced myself to make another (bigger) one… These braids have been hanging around my apartment for more months (years?) than I care to admit and it’s time to sew them together. As always, all materials are recycled – this one contains a number of …
Hand-tanned salmon leather
I tanned these salmon skins over a year ago and I finally got around to stretching them. The silvery ones were oil tanned and are pretty much the natural tone of the salmon skin, but I think my favourite is the brown tea-tanned one. Next experiment: tanning with tannic dyes…and, well, figuring out what the …
Handwoven Scarves
I recently acquired an @ashford_wheels_looms rigid heddle loom and I’ve gotten somewhat addicted to turning some of the recycled dyed yarn stash into scarves. I’ve already sold the second one from the top of the stack but the rest are still available and incredibly cozy! View on Instagram
Mowgli’s Dog Sweater
I had some leftover yarn from the last sweater and I couldn’t resist making Mowgli a tiny dog sweater… There were some unique fit challenges involved in the design of this one, and I got to try out some new steek finishing techniques without risking a whole human sweater. I’ve never had to worry about the …
Garden-dyed handknit sweater
In 2021 I made a first attempt at growing dye plants. While I succeeded at getting both a weld and a woad crop, I made an unfortunate oversight during the woad vat reduction and I saw no garden blue this year…which made it all the more gratifying to have results from the weld. This yarn …