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conscious living: from rags to rugs

I stumbled upon these fabric shag rugs from Urban Outfitters over the weekend. Made from multicolored strips of cotton and polyester, these rugs look pretty fancy, but, mind you, they’re not so difficult to make. Additionally, the design allows you to use scrap fabrics and even old cotton shirts as alternative raw materials. That’s very environmentally friendly!

Above is a “spaghetti shag rug” from Thailand made from unused, reclaimed t-shirt manufacturing remnants. The fabrics were cut into thin strips and hand-hooked into a shag rug.

The same technique was used by Elle of Xoelle when she made this plush gray rug. Because she also used old cotton t-shirts, the rug is soft, comfy and safe for her little one to play on. Her blog post here offers a step-by-step guide  on how to make this project.

Instead of latch hooking the strips of fabric, Stefanie of A Common Thread hand-knitted the fabric strips into a fine-looking bath rug. You can find her tutorial here.

If an area rug is just too big of a project for you to handle, you can start small by making a pillow case/cushion cover. V and Co has a tutorial on how to make one. This, however, requires you to stitch the pieces on a fabric backing using a sewing machine.

Great recycling projects, right?! Your old shirts and bed sheets can now have a better, brighter second life!

diy project: recycle those bottle caps

One way of  reducing our trash is to turn them into useful items. Our post on inhabitat’s Spring Greening yesterday featured sophisticated design projects that made use of common household trash like plastic bottles and soda tabs.

If that post inspired you to dig into your trash bin for possible craft materials, you can start with something small like bottle caps. Graphic designer Jessica Jones turned these humble caps into stylish mid-century clock magnets using the downloadable clock graphics she made. Click HERE for the full tutorial.

You can use these as party giveaways or loot bag fillers!

For the moms out there, another great idea is to make a ref magnet for each member in your household to hold their respective reminders and to-do lists. Instead of using Jessica’s clock graphics, you can print individual face photos of your family and stick them onto the painted caps. This way, nobody will miss any reminder!

conscious living: spring greening

In other countries, spring is about decluttering and cleaning up their spaces. In line with this practice, inhabitat.com held its second annual Spring Greening DIY Design Competition to give a new meaning to spring cleaning. The competition aimed to showcase designs that find creative use for items that are considered trash.

Here are four designs that made it to the final list:

Loto Chandelier made from plastic bottles by Eugenio Menjivar (above).

Pop pendant lamp made from soda tabs by Mauricio Affonso (below).

Potus pot made from recycled incandescent bulb by Natalia Hojman and Angeles Estrada Vigil.

And a shelf made from compressed National Geographic Magazines by Sean Miller

These innovative designs inspire us to look at trash in a whole new way. See the rest of Spring Greening’s final entries HERE.