Eco-concern is the new thrifty

Looks like recycling is finally getting sexy. Eco-concern is the new thrifty.

The craft book section has suddenly got hip, with glossy new volumes vaunting oven gloves reclaimed from your mother’s vintage dresses or conjuring stunning gift wrap using old cinema tickets and a string of dud Christmas tree lights.

Not only does The Times have a self-styled Eco Worrier Blog, but it's ok for her to write in a daily broadsheet about saving energy by making a sausage dog draught excluder from scrap fabric to mop up the 20 per cent of your heating that escapes through doors and windows.

I’m in good company then, to confess to two long held recycling ambitions of the crafty kind. And, I have decided 2007 is the year the hoard of scraps will come out from their dusty plastic bags under the bed, although my plans are a little more exciting than a new-for-old oven glove.

Since I was a teenager, I’ve hankered after a handmade patchwork quilt; not a cool ambition through the 80’s and 90’s, I admit, but nevertheless, once my daughters were born, I started saving all those lovely little dresses as they outgrew them to make what I believe is quaintly termed, a ‘charm quilt’. Full of memories and literally, a part of the fabric of your family life.

Last weekend my soon-to-be-a-teenager, and great crafts-person daughter, Rhianna, asked me for access to this carefully hoarded fabric stash to start on her own quilt.

This is the now-or-never starting gun I need.

The quilt I’ve been promising myself since I was Rhianna's age is now underway. I promise to spare you regular progress reports.

Project number two is slightly less long-in-the-tooth. I once had a Nicole Fahri knitted jacket – that's it in the photo - a prize find in TK Maxx years ago – which was plunged by a well meaning friend into a sink of soapy water. Very hot soapy water. I can report that method of shrinking and felting works extremely well. Matted, shrunken, yes; but I decided to hold onto it -the savvy, hip eco-worrier in me reluctant to part with all that potential.

Last night on one of my favourite design blogs, the never less than inspirational blog K Style.,
I heard, or rather saw, the starting gun for that project; sassycrafter Kim Taylor’s handbags made from cast-off sweaters felted and constructed with style and imagination.

It’s going to be a busy weekend.