Recycling Vintage Textiles
I believe in recycling textiles and other items, where I can. If you can source good-quality fabric from your family's cast-offs, then you have your raw materials for free, with the added bonus of the happy memories associated with a favourite old garment. However, other peoples discarded clothes, particularly shirts and sheets, may be obtained very cheaply at car boot sales or at charity shops, for a few pence more.
Classic Fabrics at Bargain Prices
One of the best places to get hold of high-quality traditional or vintage fabrics is at the local car boot sale. Fortunately, where I live there are several large car boot sales within a few miles drive. So, if the weather is fair, that is where you will find me most Sunday mornings: rummaging through other people's cast-offs and haggling over the price.
Naturally, as with antiques and other second-hand items, you need to have a discerning eye to spot the bargains from the rubbish. The things I always look for are:
- a label I can trust - such as Ben Sherman.
- large sized shirts - the collars and cuffs may be frayed but the front, backs and sleeves are usually salvageable.
- good quality fabrics - thick and tough.
- classic/traditional/vintage fabric designs.
- white cotton fabrics (sheets, shirts, skirts and other garments) suitable for hand-dyeing.
Preparing Shirts for Quilt Making
You can now see my videos on preparing shirts for quilt making on YouTube. I hope to provide more videos soon, on different topics, so please visit again soon.:
Shirts provide an excellent source of high-quality fabrics for making quilts and other quilted garments. In addition to the quality of some men's shirts, there is a good quantity of material that can be extracted and used again.
I recommend you wash the shirt thoroughly, wherever you have obtained it from, and iron it smooth so that the cutting process also runs smoothly.
Depending on the size of the shirt, you can obtain lots of fabric squares from the front, back and sleeves. Care must be taken when cutting the shirt to ensure you make full use of all the fabric available - I recommend you use a large cutting mat and a rotary cutter to be sure of consistent results.
Large squares can be used for the main quilt top and smaller squares for around the edges in a classic quilt design.
Create Your Own Look with Hand-Dyed Fabrics
I use a Procion MX reactive dyes to create the a full colour-wheel of fabrics. I use natural good-quality cotton fabrics as the basis for my colour experiments.
After much experimentation I now know the 'formula' or mix of base colours that I need to achieve consistent results when trying to replicate colours. The process involves using a washing machine (on a 60 degree programme), or a microwave, to obtain the colours I want.
I intend to run a one-day course, at some point in the near future, to pass on this knowlege to others who want to learn to produce hand-dyed fabrics.
I always advocate using quality fabrics whenever you are making something, and they needn't cost the earth. There's a tradition of using old clothes to make new fashions and furnishings, which has kind of fallen out of fashion over the years, but is recently showing signs of making a come-back.