Recycle, Reuse, Redesign Project: Crocheting Flowers

Summer is a time to start new projects. Theoretically, you have more time (although I'm not sure if I do because I'm working and interning). Lately, every time I look in my closet or around my room I'm tired of all of my "stuff." I want new clothes, new jewelry, new decorations. But it's expensive and over-all wasteful to buy new stuff when I have perfectly good old stuff. So I've decided to start a little summer project:

1. I will recycle my old clothes/things by selling or trading them at buy/sell/trade places. Or I will donate them to places like the salvation army or various clothing drives. This will give me the opportunity to buy new things without having an excess of stuff.

2. I will reuse old clothes, old pieces of fabric, leftover yarn, and anything old in order to...

3. Redesign my old clothes, jewelry, etc. using things that I have reused.

For the past couple of months, I've been into crocheting. I made hats in the winter:

After my hat project, I had lots of leftover yarn. So I made a blanket out of the leftovers, creati

ng blocks and sewing them together.

The blanket took forever, and I had trouble coming up with a good picture of it, but it's a little bit smaller than a double bed, and it's goofy looking up I absolutely love it! And it's really warm in the winter.

But now summer is here and it's too hot to be wearing hats or lying under wool quilts. So I've moved on to crocheting flowers.

I've decided to use some of the tiiiiiny bits of leftover wool I have to make flowers. And they're

great for decorating--reusing and redesigning! This site has some great patterns for flowers. I suggest using them to make jewelry. I've seen some really great crocheted necklaces, and I still haven't attempted them yet. This necklace looks beautiful.

However, my favorite thing to do with the flowers is add them to clothing. You can pin them to clothes as either a way to add color or alter the garment. For this skirt I attached some different colored flowers to the side. It's a work skirt, and I have to wear black shirts at work and I end up look like I'm going to a funeral without the flowers on this skirt!

Another thing I tried was I had a dress that kept falling off of my shoulders. The dress is a weird cut... there's a little tie in the back but otherwise your back is bare. So I pinned the back and stuck a flower on it to make it look nicer and make it fit:

I'm super excited about redesigning my stuff. If anyone needs any crochet patterns for anything, let me know and maybe I can help you out!!