Re-purposing

I love finding ways to save money and reuse items instead of buying new.

I recently saw a post by Julia @ Blissfully Content about revamping your old rags.  She has directions for making them on her blog.  I loved the idea, and had to try it out.

These are so much nicer to look at.  Let's face it, by the time a towel makes it to the rag stage, it's usually pretty beat up.  This is a great way to pep them up a bit.  The fabric was even a freebie from someone who decided not to go into quilting after buying a bunch of supplies.

I like making rags from a number of things.  Some of my favorites are old, terry cloth robes (makes great washcloths), old cloth diapers (although my Dad, who's a gunsmith would always talk me out of mine for use in his shop), and toweling scraps.

You may remember these that I made for Ri out of scraps left from making a couple of hooded baby towels.

Another thing I love to reuse are gallon, and half gallon pickle jars.  Several of my girls love pickles, so we can go through some large jars.  The only problem I ever had was in trying to get the pickle smell out of the lid.  I tried every trick in the book, and while I could get enough of the smell out for dry items, you could never use the jar for wet things because the smell was never completely gone.  My remedy for this was to contact the manufacturer, which happened to be a company right here in NC, and ask them what size lid they used for their jars.  Then I found a company on the internet that sold the size lid I needed, and ordered a bunch.  You just have to keep a couple of things in mind; 1) You need to check and see if the company can sell retail, and 2) if they sell in small quantities, because you probably won't need a case of 1,000 lids.  By ordering at least a couple of dozen (dependent, of course, on your family's pickle consumption) you can reduce the amount per lid you'll end up paying in shipping charges.  

Another way we like to reuse things, mostly clothing items, is to turn them into decorative pillows.  The girls have used several things to make pillows to dress up, and add a personal touch to their beds.  And though we don't wear jeans (unless we're turning them into a blue jean skirt), I've seen them made into cute throw pillows.

And here's one of my last re-purposing projects.  We recently bought a cute little bistro set to go in the sunroom.  It's taking the place of a bench we had sitting there that had several throw pillows on it.  Instead of turning something into a pillow, I took a pillow I had on the bench and turned it into a cover for the seat.  I didn't really want a thick, padded cushion, but since the walls are tan, with white wainscoting, and the bistro set is beige, we needed a little color.  I took the pillows apart, cut them to size, added some batting, and then quilted.

It's always fun to find new uses for older items.

I've linked this post with the Barn Hop.