Reclaimed Fabric Appliques
One of the fastest and easiest ways to give a plain piece of clothing a new look is the use of fabric appliques. I’ve been collecting appliques for decades. I’ve bought appliques now and then at good clearance sales, and have even reclaimed some from sweaters, jackets and dresses I’ve bought at garage sales or vintage shops. I tend to buy black appliques more than any other color, but I do have several appliques in white and beige.
Occasionally, I’ve come across an unusual collar, like the large black beaded collar piece pictured here. This beaded collar is from a sweater I bought at a vintage shop. I sewed the beaded collar piece onto a black blouse I have and wear it with a black/brown print jacket. Appliques are very easy to sew and tack onto any piece of clothing. You can use a matching color thread and depending on the thickness of the fabric, use a heavy duty thread for heavy fabrics (like denim), or a lighter thread for delicate fabrics (like silk). Another great advantage of enhancing any article of clothing with an applique is that it’s not permanent, so if you should ever find a more beautiful applique, you can always remove it and sew on the new one in its place.
Sometimes you may come across a damaged dress or blouse that is very ornate with beautiful features, but it’s bottom edge is ripped or mangled. Well you can still reclaim the dress or what have you by cutting out the ornate applique features and using those cut pieces as appliques on your own article of clothing. Appliques are easy to sew onto any blouse, sweater, dress, jacket or even a purse because they are already affixed to a sturdy mesh backing. Most appliques are so beautiful that you can also use them in an art project. So the uses for these appliques are limited only to your imagination.
Reclaimed Wood Abstract Doll
I’ve always wanted to try making an abstract doll of some kind, but had no idea where to even start. Four months ago, I experimented and drew a simple shape on a piece of scrap wood I found in our basement and asked my husband to cut out the drawn shape. Although the shape was simple, it was also a bit crude as the shape had a round head (no neck), a squarish torso and a bell shaped skirt bottom for the lower body. The doll measures 17 inches tall (including the base on which she is perched) and 11-1/2 inches wide (at its widest point of the wood skirt/body).
I thought I’d make the doll’s arms with wire and envisioned bending her wired arms, attaching a small bouquet of flowers to her hands and her (wire arms) holding them up near her face as if to smell them. That’s when I thought of painting her face with closed eyes as if she was taking in the fragrance of the flowers. I did paint the doll’s face with her eyes closed, but the plan to use wire arms did not work out, so I ended up leaving the doll’s face painted with her eyes closed.
I wanted to make some kind of outfit for the doll using as much of my reclaimed fabrics as possible. Looking through my old fabrics, I found a very pretty light pink (polyester) fabric that was perfect because I had so much of this fabric that if I made any mistakes on any part of the outfit, I could start all over again without worries of running out of fabric.
I held the fabric up to the doll’s waist, pinned the fabric a half inch longer for the hem allowance at both ends, cut the fabric and held the fabric against the doll, roughly gathering it to get an idea of how full/wide to make the full length skirt. I tripled the width and then cut the fabric. I made a simple running stitch hem at the waistline and ran a bigger basting stitch at the top edge of the waistline so I could pull the fabric, gathering it at the waist. The skirt began to fully gather and take a beautiful shape. Once the fabric was more or less evenly gathered around the waist, I knotted the thread to hold that tension. For a closure at the waist I sewed a very small snap (base), then sewed the other snap (top half) to the other end at the waist. I left a two inch opening at the waist below the snap closure, hand sewed a quarter inch hem straight down to seal both open fabric panels at the back of the skirt and then sewed them together to complete the skirt. I ironed the entire skirt and surprisingly the fabric turned out very nice and full ,considering I did not use a petticoat underneath.
Because the skirt was so plain, I decided to crochet a pretty beige trim about an inch from the bottom edge of the skirt and continued crocheting all the way around. I used a 00 size crochet needle and crocheted the trim with three double-crochet stitches. I pinned the crochet trim to the skirt as I continued to crochet the trim all the way around the base of the skirt. I removed one pin at a time and hand sewed the trim to the skirt with matching beige thread.
I ended up making the doll arms from two square pieces I cut from my old black sweatshirt. I rolled up the squares, pulling on the stretchy fabric and hand sewing them into a rough arm shape. Since the doll had no shoulders, I hot glued (and tacked down) each of the arms to an approximate place where they looked best on either side of doll’s torso. I made the little hands from polymer clay and pierced a hole in the top part of the clay wrists before baking them so that I could later sew (attach) them onto the (sweatshirt) arms.
The jacket was made from two squares of the same pink fabric. I measured the two squares by eye, cut and then sewed them together, cutting the front square down the middle so the jacket would be open in front. I left two holes on either side near the top of the squares so I could sew on sleeves. The sleeves were also squarish in shape and very loosely made so that I could put the doll arms into the sleeves. I later crocheted the shawl around the doll to make it look like she had shoulders and to cover the loose fitting clothes.
For the doll hair, I used a roll of brown woolly trim that I found in my yarn box. I cut six 4″ long pieces, and with needle and matching brown thread loosely sewed the six pieces together to form a head cover that resembled hair. The furry wool is so wild, it really looked like hair, and I painted the doll’s wood head in a matching brown color so you can’t really notice the open spaces throughout the sewed hair piece.
The Accessories
The hat is made from a scrap piece of thick interfacing leftover from a purse project. I had several jar lids, and placed them on the doll’s head to find the right hat width for the doll’s head. With a pencil, I traced around the lid onto the interfacing, cut the round shape and then by eye, another round hole in the center to rest on the doll’s head. For the crown, I cut a rectangular strip of interfacing and hot glued it from one edge of the center hole to the other edge of the hole. I covered the entire hat with the same pink fabric, and hot glued it to the interfacing. I also crocheted a trim for the hat (sewed it onto the hat) and embellished the hat with a little rosette (from the same pink fabric) and hot glued the rosette to the center front of the hat.
The little purse measures 1-3/4″ wide by 2″ long and is made of the same pink fabric folded into a little rectangle and then hand sewn to shape. I also cut and sewed a small narrow piece of the same pink fabric for a tiny purse strap. Later, I also crocheted a matching trim near the top of the purse and added a tiny rosette.
The parasol measures 7″ long by 2″ wide and is made from plastic skewers that I had saved from a gift fruit arrangement. I used one skewer as the main center post, tightly wrapped a rubberband (wound around many times) near the skewer bottom end, took six more skewers and tucked them into one strand of the wound rubber band, spacing them evenly around the main center skewer. I was surprised that this worked and the six skewers remained in place evenly around the center skewer. Using wire cutters, I trimmed the six skewers shorter than the main center skewer. I then measured and wrapped the same pink fabric around the length of the skewers and added four inches to the total fabric width. I then hot glued the bottom (folded) edge of the pink fabric to the skewers one at a time making sure to pull extra fabric in between the skewers so it would mimic the look of a semi-folded umbrella. I repeated the same process to the top end of the parasol.
To make the parasol handle, I used three plastic hook-shaped pieces (saved from the top of three packets of socks) and hot glued them together. I also hot glued the main skewer to the hook handle. I later wrapped the handle with the crochet thread to make it look like one uniform piece and repeated that process around the bottom end of the parasol.
Making this doll was a very challenging experience, but very rewarding upon completing all of the accessories. And the most fun part of making this doll was that there were no rules because this was an abstract doll that I made from scrap wood and leftover reclaimed materials.
Scrap Wood Flower Box
This wood flower box started out as pieces of scrap wood that we had left over after one of our rehab projects. I originally wanted save the scrap wood pieces to paint folk art farm scenes. I painted on the smaller scrap wood pieces, which at the time I was selling at our local craft shows. My husband reused some of the drywall screws that were left over to put the box together. He also used some pieces of scrap moldings and an old wood applique we had reclaimed. We then spread drywall compound on the outside of the box with an old dried out paint brush to give it a rustic look we were looking for and once the drywall compound thoroughly dried, we painted the box with a cream colored latex paint. I added some silk vines I had lying around in my basement, and the final project turned out exceptionally well. Although I decided to use silk vines in mine, if one wanted to use a real plant, you could use any plastic bag or liner in the box and drill two holes at the bottom for drainage. So don’t hesitate to play around with scrap wood pieces. See what you can create and just have fun.
Recycled Fleece Leopard Gloves
Another way to give an old pair of gloves a fresh new look is by adding some type of embellishment, especially when the gloves have a two inch extended cuff. I thought the gloves would look very nice embellished with some beautiful fabric. I looked through my fabric remnants and found an old leopard print that I thought would look very nice sewn onto the cuffs of my gloves. I measured the cuffs, the fabric, and then cut enough fabric for both cuffs.
I sewed the fabric onto each cuff and started by placing the fabric edge near the elastic edge part of the cuff. I then made sure to slightly gather the fabric every inch or so and sewed that gathered fabric firmly to the glove. This would ensure that the fabric would have enough elasticity to stretch with the glove’s elastic edge.
Next I folded the rest of the fabric over the cuff edge and sewed the other end to the inside part of the glove. I really loved the way the newly embellished gloves turned out. They have a totally different look and with only a little less than a quarter yard of fabric. You don’t have to embellish a cuff with fabric, you can easily change the look of gloves with simple and colorful buttons, bows, or other embellishments. There are so many wonderful and fun fabrics for children and many that can be found on sale in the remnants section of a fabric store.
Reclaimed Towel Dog Toy
The idea for this reclaimed towel dog toy all started with our puppy boy Maxx who always loved to play tug with his towels as soon as we dried him off after a bath or after playing in the snow. We wanted to recycle some old terry cloth towels that Maxx had ripped up. These towels were still solid enough to make some kind of simple tug toy for Maxx to play with.
We snugly rolled up the towel length-wise (so that a small ripped part in the middle was hidden) and then carefully tied one end of the rolled up towel into a big knot (making sure to tuck the towel end tip inside the loop of the knot). The tug toy is very sturdy, yet soft enough that it won’t hurt a dog’s mouth when he pulls and bites it. It’s also easy to keep clean because the tug toy can always be untied and thrown in the washer. Once the tug toy gets worn out, one can easily make another one from old towels. The towels could also be cut up into smaller strips for smaller pets.
