Repurposing

My sister-in-law, Josie, in her infinite wisdom, made a comment this summer and it has stuck with me. We were discussing thrift store shopping and she commented on how much extra stuff there is in the world and how if we'd repurpose some of it, there wouldn't be a large of need to manufacture so much stuff.

I thought that this was very true and it inspired me greatly when I was considering making some decorative changes to our bedroom.

First of all, I was in a purging mood and was sorting through boxes of stuff and wanted to get rid of things. In a rubbermaid container where I store fabric, I found some red curtains that my friend, Susan, had given me a couple of years ago. I thought that I could maybe switch the white curtains in my room and use the red ones instead. But then, I would need to change my pillows and blanket to match.

A trip to the local quilting store inspired me to make a quilt, but looking at their prices, I decided it would have to wait.

Back to the box of fabric. In it, I also found a tablecloth that I had bought several years ago and loved, but accidentally wrecked with bleach, and some leftover material from my living room curtains. Seeing as these two items matched the colour scheme I wanted for my quilt, I decided to see if I could make them work.

I ended up using the tablecloth for the larger blocks on my quilt and the blue curtain scraps for smaller blocks. I had an extra blue topsheet from our bed that worked for the back of the quilt (& it's so nice and soft!) and an old mattress pad cover that worked as the filling. I purchased the rest of the fabric I needed at the quilting store.










I was inspired by this piece of patterned paper to make some matching pillows.



If you'd like to see the step by step instructions for making the pillows, you can check out my post on the My Scrap Shoppe blog.

Thanks for looking!

And to all my canadian friends, happy Thanksgiving!