UP-CYCLED WATER BOTTLE HOLDER -DESIGN TWO

I finally have time to write about my second attempt to make a water bottle holder! I was still trying to find a way to make a water bottle holder that did not require special skills to produce. This time, instead of crocheting, I found some items that were tucked away in the corners of my house: a can cozy, the strap from a broken camera, and two soda can tabs.  Can cozies tend to be a rather common item here in the United States. (This one was given to us as advertising for a State Farm agent. ) The camera strap makes a good water bottle strap, but obviously, not everyone will have one of those available to use. Any number of substitutions could be used here, from old, thin belts to braided yarn or string. I will tell you how I put mine together with the supplies I have pictured.

The first thing that I did was to remove the letters from my camera strap. I suppose that this was not completely necessary, but I always like to have my creations blend in and not scream, “I’m recycled” if it is at all possible. The letters on this one were not printed or woven into the fabric of the strap, but were adhered to it. So I picked at the letters until they came off. This gave me a plain black nylon strap with all the hardware needed to adjust its length to fit the heights of different users.

Now the next step is like the last one in that it is done to improve the look of the finished produce and not its functioning. If my husband was a State Farm agent, I might have left the advertising on the cozy, but as he is not, I used a rectangular scrap of fabric, stiffened with some interfacing, to cover the lettering. I simply sewed the fabric in place.

To attach the strap, the easiest expedient seemed to be the aluminum tabs from cola cans. To prepare these, I used my pliers to remove the sharp edge from the end that was attached to the can. This can be achieved by bending the sharp edge to the back and wrapping it around the outside curve of the tab. Then  I used upholstery thread to attach the tab to the cozy.  The final step was to thread the ends of the camera strap through the tabs and tighten them into place.

Even though this design does work, it was still not what I wanted to achieve, which was a way to make a water bottle holder that anyone could make.  This one still required things that not everyone would have on hand. So I tried yet a third method and finally achieved something that I think fits the requirements. More on that next time!

UP-CYCLED WATER BOTTLE HOLDER- DESIGN ONE

Last summer, my family had the privilege of having my brother and his family come home from the mission field for a visit. We took them on a short hike to a waterfall in our area, and trained to take their own water with them whenever they leave home, my young nieces all asked to have a bottle of water to take with them. As we walked along the trail, I was somewhat bemused to watch as one by one, they brought their bottles to their mother to carry. Absorbed in our conversation, she absentmindedly took them until the third one presented her with the problem of not having enough hands! Then they were all called back to carry their own bottles again, but the incident did remind me of similar moments when my own children were small. I decided that there must be a simple (and free!) way to provide water bottle holders for family trips.

My first idea was to simply crochet some water bottle holders out of plarn. It would be free and waterproof.  I cut up my plastic shopping bags and made a ball of plarn, and then I began to experiment.  If you know how to crochet, making a water bottle holder is not difficult at all. Essentially, I crocheted a circle just slightly larger than the diameter of the water bottle and then stopped increasing and began the sides. Once the sides were tall enough to support the bottle, I crocheted a handle. The nice thing about this method of creating a water bottle holder is that no two need be alike! I used different stitches, colors and styles on both of the examples seen here. (Thanks, Pat, for modeling!) In the photo at the top, I was going wild with color and stitches and even incorporated cola bottle rings into the design. I also crocheted the holder and strap as a single unit. In my second effort, I was trying for a faster design so I used a large open lattice-style stitch which did speed up production time. I also attached the handle as a separate piece, using pop tabs from food cans as the hardware so that the holder would be able to bend easier.

Both of these holders worked very well, but since most people do not know how to crochet, I continued looking for other inexpensive ways to make them. More on my efforts still to come…

OLD YARN, NEW HOT PADS

While I was in the process of making new denim pot holders, I also looked into making some hot pads to protect the table while the food is being served. At home, I normally just press my pot holders into doing double duty, but I wanted to make some nicer ones for our church so that we could protect the table and still have our hot dishes in a serving line. That is when I found this sweater. It was somewhat dated, but the yarn was very nice and made of natural fibers. It looked like a good candidate for using on a loom so I took the sweater apart.

Using two strands of yarn at a time on a Martha Stewart loom, I wove the yarn into a rectangle large enough to hold a 9 x 13 inch casserole dish. However, I did not stop with one layer of fabric. Without removing the first layer that I had made, I threaded a second layer of warp threads above it and wove a second rectangle. Then I used a crochet hook to bind the edges of both layers together as I removed them from the loom. This formed a very nice pad that was thick enough to protect the tables, washed well, and did not give any indication of its former life.

Since there were four different colors in the original sweater, I was able to make each hot pad look a little different by changing the colors of the yarn that I combined. As hard as it was for me to believe, I was able to get four 9 x 13 inch pads of a double thickness, plus two smaller pot holders (also double thick), from a single sweater!

DENIM POTHOLDERS REVISITED

In the midst of preparing meals everyday, two of the most-used items in my kitchen are my potholders. They are seemingly in constant demand at the stove, oven, and table. Sadly, they are also one of the last things to get replaced when they wear out! They just seem to escape my notice when I am not using them. As I contemplated my very badly-worn potholders, I decided to make another set of denim potholders that would compliment the one I had already made.

Potholders are very simple to make from old clothing that you have around the house. The only real caution that should be observed when choosing what fabrics to use is that they need to be made of natural fibers. If the tag is missing from a garment you would like to use, test the fiber content by holding a small scrap of it near a candle flame. If the fabric wants to smoke and burn, it should be fine for this project. If it melts, it is made of synthetic fibers and would not be suitable for the high temperatures that a potholder would come into contact with. I chose to work with old denim overalls, parts of felted wool sweaters, and some strips of a man’s dress shirt.

I began by tracing a paper pattern of my current potholders, which were a pocket-style so that there was a place to slide your hand inside. They were a nice size and have worked well, so I saw no need to alter the basic size or shape. The only thing I changed was the front pocket. Since the pair of overalls that I was redeeming had sizable rear pockets, I decided to use those instead of cutting new pieces. (For the sake of clarity, I need to state that I made a new matched set, so my instructions from here to the end of the article will refer to two potholders.) After I had cut the front pockets and the fronts and backs for the back sections out of the denim, I turned my attention to cutting the inner lining (the piece that insulates the hand). As I said, I chose to use felted wool sweater, but if that is not available, other materials like old cotton terrycloth towels or pieces of cotton sweatshirt cut and stacked together should also work. I used the same pattern I had used to cut the outside fabric and cut enough sweater pieces to make reasonably sure that the pad would be thick enough to insulate my hand.

Since I was using the old pockets from my overalls at the front of my new potholders, I wanted to make sure that there was some insulation in them as well as in the back. I cut two thin, felted sweater pieces, enclosed them in the pockets, and sewed the pockets closed. The fronts of my pot holders were pretty much done. Then I turned my attention to the back pieces. I decided to quilt the pieces of denim and sweater together, so I drew some simple lines on the front of the denim in pencil (these are a little hard to see), stacked and pinned all the layers together and stitched along my lines. The multiple layers do want to creep around some, so be sure that you have pinned the pieces well and don’t sew too quickly.

With my front and back sections completed, I needed to have something to cover the raw edges along the sides once I had stitched the sections together. For this I made some homemade bias “tape.” I used the back of a man’s old dress shirt which, though not 100% cotton, was enough of a blend of natural fibers to work as an edging. I like working with men’s dress shirts for something like this because many of them have a plaid pattern, which makes cutting them evenly very simple. They also tend to look the same on both sides of the fabric, making them perfect for jobs like this. Bias tape is made by cutting diagonal strips from the fabric and stitching them together until you have enough for your project. The strips that I cut were about an inch-and-a-half wide. To connect them together they need to be overlapped and stitched together as the above photo demonstrates. After I had stitched all my strips together, I ironed all the seams open and then ironed a quarter-inch fold (towards the side with the seams pressed open) all the way down the length of one side.

With my bias tape made, I was ready to add it to my potholders. I folded over a small flap on the end of my tape (this makes a nice edge on the front when you are through), and starting at the top and matching the raw-edged side of the tape to the raw edge of my back piece, I pinned the tape all the way around and cut off the excess when I reached the top again. Because my overall pocket fronts already had a “finished” edge that I did not want to cover under the bias tape, I only pinned the tape to the back piece. If you are making a single layer fold-over style potholder, you will also be pinning the tape to the single piece. But if you are making a pocket style and your front piece also has raw edges, you need to stack the front and back together and then pin the bias tape on top as shown in the photo. Then I stitched the tape in place. Before I folded the tape to the back, I added my pocket piece to the front and stitched it down. Then I folded the folded-edge of the tape to the back of the holder and hand-stitched it in place.

My final step was to cut a length of one of the top-stitched seams from the overalls and form hanging loops from it to sew to the tops of my pot holders. Because of the overall pockets that I used, my new holders are slightly smaller than my old ones, but outside of that, they are working very well. And they were completely free except for my thread!

This project brought to mind Malachi 4:1&2, “For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root not branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings…”. It is comforting to me to think that there is coming a day when evil and wickedness will be no more. At one point in my life, I would have had to fear this day, because I would have had to count myself as one of the wicked. But because I have trusted in the name of Jesus Christ as my Savior, I no longer need fear the penalty of my sin. Like my hot pads absorb the heat from my hot dishes, He faced the heat of God’s judgment for me, and I now stand protected by the sacrifice He made on my behalf. Now I can look forward to the day when the “Sun of righteousness (shall) arise with healing in his wings”!

OLD DRESS, NEW SKIRT

Not too long ago, I found this dress in some items that had been given to me. It was out-of-date and had the complications of a dry-clean-only label, but the skirt was 100% polyester, so I knew that it could be washed and dried in my washing machine. A machine-washable skirt in a nice print that was lined and already hemmed?! I decided to see if I could separate the skirt from the rest of the dress. The biggest complication that I had to work around was that the zipper extended into the skirt section. That was not a major problem since I would want to save the zipper in any event. I removed it and the buttons on the front and cut the skirt free from the rest of the dress. I left a fairly substantial margin of the original lining above the skirt because I wanted to make an over-sized casing to accept a strip of elastic for the new waist and lengthen the overall length of the skirt.  I finished the seam in the back where the zipper had been and then turned the lining down for the casing. Due to the way the original dress had been sewn, there was no real way for me to turn down a casing without having some exposed seams show on the outside of the casing. For those of you who are true seamstresses at heart, this is making you cringe, I know! No, the result was not very pretty, but I plan to cover it up with a blouse, so no one will have to look at the waistband! Fortunately, I already have a blouse on hand to wear with my new skirt. All I need now is some warmer weather so that I can wear it!

UP-CYCLED FUNNEL SCOOP

I generally buy my coffee in a large container because it is cheaper that way, but because I have limited space in my cabinets, I store that container on a high shelf and transfer a portion of the coffee into my lovely glass canisters. Every time that I have had to do this in the past, I have had to pull out a funnel and spoon to make the transfer. Even then, I always got coffee grounds sprinkled all over my counter tops! Today, I tried a new idea. I cut the handle from my empty laundry detergent bottle into the shape in the above photo and cleaned all residue of soap from it. By scooping the coffee and tilting the handle down into my jars, I was able to avoid the funnel and spoon. Cleanup was easy. I just left the new scoop in the large container to be used the next time I need to transfer more coffee!  I probably will cut a new scoop the next time I empty another laundry bottle, but as an improvement on this design, I will leave a higher section of plastic on the back of the scoop to help funnel the coffee down the handle.

SMALL TOKENS FROM UPCYCLED CARDS AND CALENDARS

In spite of the advance of technology which allows us to send electronic messages and use an electronic appointment calendar, greeting cards and wall calendars are still popular. There is just something special about getting a pretty card that can be viewed without being turned on or plugged in! In addition to its visual appeal, it impacts our senses with its smell and feel, and the handwritten signature of the sender is so much more personal than the an electronic font. The problem with the cards and calendars is that they are so beautiful that you hate to throw them away!  I have begun turning mine into small tokens to give away as party favors and gifts.

The easiest thing to make out of these materials is bookmarks. Even though many people love their ebooks, others still love the look, feel and smell of a regular book. If you have individuals of your acquaintance who feel this way, a recycled card bookmark is a lovely way to spread some joy! There are numerous styles that can be used from the standard tasselled bookmark style to folded magnetic ones or even corner shaped ones that simply slip over the top corner of the page. I like the magnetic ones because they hold onto the page and don’t slip out of the book. I was excited when magnet tape was introduced into the market since it makes this project so simple!

Another thing that I enjoyed doing with the cards and magnet tape was to make refrigerator frames. I cut the card or calendar page down to the size I want, cut a window in the front piece, glue the remaining side and bottom edges together and add some magnet tape to the back. I can then add other embellishments to the front; like bows, lace or flowers. For the pink card in the upper portion of the picture at right, I just happened to have a ribbon flower that looked just like the printed flowers on the face of the card, so I offset the window cutout and added the flower for visual interest. Some cards come with the window already cut out for you!  These frames are also not limited to the refrigerator.  Use them as a mat in another frame, or with an easel to display special quotes or messages. Small ones can even be used at the table as place cards holders so your guests know where to sit.