Repurposing with a purpose

I have a wonderful family and friends, that are so supportive.  They know that I'm always repurposing, recycling or repairing things. So donations are always offered to me.  Very seldom do I decline these donations.  It gives me great satisfaction to avoid being so disposal and find new uses for them.  Over the last few years I've accumulated odds and ends that would have ended up in the landfill.

At the AuSable Quilt Guild we started an Idea Challenge Jar.  Members of the guild were asked to write an idea on a piece of paper to put into our jar.  The idea could be a color, an object, a technique, a quilt block, but not limited to these few suggestions.  How the idea is interpreted is up to each member - there is no wrong or right way to execute this idea.  During our September meeting we deposited our ideas in this jar.  October we picked our first challenge - "repurpose".  I have to say this was not my idea, but it certainly excited me to hunt through my donation stash and see what I could do.  I found blue jeans, sweaters, and many other miscellaneous items.  This is great incentive to clear out some of my donation stash.

First, I have a couple sweater jackets from my daughter.  They have several different prints and it will be fun to mix and match pieces from these sweaters to make mittens.

I have a few more pieces left, but not enough for a full pair of mittens.  I'll have to search for one more sweater to finish piecing a pair of mittens.  I wonder if she'll recognize her sweater when she sees these mittens.

Next, I had some leftover rubber shelf liner.  With that I repurposed it into jar lid openers.  It is a quick and easy project and I tested one,  they really work!  I will be making more as Christmas stocking stuffers.

I feed birds all year long.  I have quite a variety that visit my feeders.  There are so many birds that I fill my feeders up daily.  The bags of black sunflower seeds have great pictures of birds and flowers on them.  Recently, my husband has been purchasing sunflower seed bags that have large yellow sunflowers with bees on them.  We gone through a few bags and each time we throw them out I' was tempted to keep it to repurpose.  Well, with this repurposing challenge I decided I needed to make a tote from one of these bags.  It's sturdy and will be great hauling my groceries.

I've cleaned through some of my stash, but have a few more projects I'll tackle.