Originally Posted by jaciqltznok

Do you repurpose fabrics from clothing?
There has been a lot of discussion lately about the cost of fabric going up while the quality is going down.

Here are some of the things I use fabrics from the local thrift stores for. I often only pay $.23 per item.

I buy the man's all cotton shirts for quilts, woman's usually have spandex and too many darts to be of any real value. Out of the man's 3x long sleeve shirt you get over 1 yard of usable fabric. The cuffs, collar, pockets and yoke get donated to Girl scouts for crafting.

Here is my #1 tip on buying shirts, if it has NO label, so not buy it, no matter how good you are at knowing fabric, feeling it alone is no guarantee that it is cotton.

My #2 tip is this, the lighter the color, the more polyester it will have! Fact of life, lighter is harder to keep to clean so it has to be more durable..hence polyester. I only buy 100% cotton for quilting, but if it is really a neat print I might use it for a craft item!

I buy the wool slacks and skirts to cut into strips that are used to make woven/braided rugs, wool blazers get felted and cut into sizes to make craft items to sell, wool blankets make batting.

When the items have cool buttons they get sold and or collected, the everyday buttons get donated back to the thrift store as they also have a shelter and use the buttons when they to replace some on clothing given away.

I buy silks that get cut up and then I save some for myself, swap some, and the rest are sold in scrap bags at crazy quilt shows!

Denim skirts and jumpers are being used to make garden planting pots, jeans get made into shopping bags.

They all have a RE-purpose!

Originally Posted by oksewglad

I've made what I call "back door" rugs out of denim. Some of my denim is stained (ie manure/grease stains), these I cut into squares and make a rug like one would make a rag quilt, but 2 layers of denim. To avoid intersecting seams, stagger the rows starting with a rectangle unit. Number of squares needed depends on how big the squares are and how big the rug is to be. A 3 x 5 foot one works great on my mud room floor. This time of year the snit melts on the rug not my floor. Then I throw the dirty rug into the washer with DH's dirty jeans. I have to watch these though as they have been known to dry off a newborn calf, grace a wet tractor seat, etc!
We also use cloth towels to clean cows teats before milking. Old sweatshirts, t-shirts, and sox work great for this task and last through many washings of hot water and bleach!