All you really need is a little plastic thing of needles ($1), some pins ($1), thread (varies but even good cotton thread isn’t that much), scissors (where you might actually consider investing a little - do not use these scissors for anything else, and consider a rotary cutter if you really get into it), and fabric.

Fabric might seem like the pricey part of the equation, but consider how much a thrift store is going to charge you for a duvet or a pile of t-shirts! I have something like 30 t-shirts I spent maybe $5 on several months ago, and I’ve been working through that pile for a while.

You can turn a t-shirt into a pillow, a reusable bag, use the scraps to patch clothing, make dolls, quilts… The bits that get to be so small to be unusable for a scrap quilt you can use to stuff things.

It takes a lot of time compared to machine sewing, but it’s an activity that can be done while watching a tv show.

  • andros_rex@lemmy.world
    OP
    31·
    11 days ago

    (The yellow stitches are basting stitches, meant to hold the hexagons to the paper and will eventually be removed)

    I paid about $2 for this stack of 10 t-shirts. (Avoid goodwill, go to the mom and pop places). None of these shirts were ever going to be used again. No one wants the t-shirt of a random church or police department, or a stained white t-shirt, or a high school football team.

    Instead of buying fabric - buying something new which would encourage a retailer to buy something to replace it - I am repurposing these shirts into yarn (which I knit into rugs), patches for other clothing (which would otherwise need to be thrown away), reusable bags, or scrap quilts (which will mean that I can keep my thermostat lower in the winter).

    These shirts are the kinds of things that would otherwise end up as textile waste, a pile of useless clothing in Ghana. “Reuse” in the second R in importance in “reduce, reuse, recycle.”

    I think also that the ability to repair clothes instead of throwing them away is a huge part of the equation. I had an ex that would throw clothes away for missing a button. That is not particularly uncommon.