How can I reuse or recycle curtain swatches?
We’ve had an email from Stephannie:
Just having our lounge curtains replaced and got a lot of fabric swatches to check out colours etc before hand. Not sure what to do with them now. They’re mostly about A4 size with fractions of big patterns on. Thought about little coin purses or pin cushions but patterns don’t really work for that.
A friend of mine at uni got a book of (admittedly plain) curtain fabric swatches and sewed them together to make a patchwork curtain for over their draughty door. That needs a 60+ swatches though, so probably more than you’ve got.
Earlier in the year, I was looking at basic fabric doorstops – basically cubes with a handle. If you’ve got six swatches that are good colour matches, that might work.
Or colour coordinating mini-quilt padded coasters – where the general colour is more important than the pattern. We’ve got some little padded coasters with cloves in them so they let off a pleasant aroma when “activated” by a hot drink.
Any other suggestions?
Sewing them into a curtain or quilt is a good idea. You could also make tote bags from them.
Do you have a loft with one of those trap doors in the ceiling? We do – and it was an enormous ‘cold sump’ in winter. Until last year – we could not figure out a safe, easy, way to insulate the door that would not hinder its use (ours also has one of those drop down fold out ladder thing-a-me-bobs which complicates things). Last fall we re-decorated the livingroom and replaced the curtains – the old ones are/were nice heavy duty material typical “curtain” material. I now have one that folds over the opening of the trap door to the loft much like a “roman blind” its easy to slide back & forth as one needs to get in and out of the loft and it has effectively eliminated the cold sinking into the house from the loft space.
not very creative i know, but unless these things have a shelf life (i’m afraid i’m rather ignorant on the curtain fabric fashion front!) rather than creating something random for the sake of it, I would have thought the least wasteful thing to do would be to return them to be reused for their original purpose.
Send them to crafty people who love to drool over any scraps of fabric going, and who will quite probably reuse them and make them into something upcycled! I’d take them any day, my email is kimbishopp@gmail.com or alternatively, sell them on ebay for whatever your listing and P&P costs!
Perfect for place mats!