Although I haven't seen a copy yet I have been told that Pogglers is mentioned in the June 2008 issue of Junior Magazine (UK) in an article on what to do with old baby clothes. So hop down to the shops and get your copy now!
If you do have an old item of clothing that you can't bear to part with then we can make it into a doll, Funky Monster or other soft toy for you. Either let us create a design for you, suggest some ideas yourself for us to base the design on or send us your design or drawing along with the item and we will work our magic. You could even get your child to draw a doll or monster and we will base the design on that for a truly unique toy.
Visit Pogglers for recycled dolls and Funky Monsters.
Happy poggling!
Showing posts with label recycling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recycling. Show all posts
Friday, 9 May 2008
Wednesday, 2 April 2008
Recycling clothes
In our increasingly consumerist society we seem to buy an awful lot of clothes, especially when it comes to our children. Before clothes became so cheap and easy to get hold of it was natural to keep clothes from one child to the next. Dresses and trousers were made with large hems which could be lowered when the children grew, socks were darned and rips and tears were mended with patches. Now it is much easier for many people to go out and buy new ones, especially for families with larger disposable incomes and little spare time to do the mending. There was a question posted on a parenting forum recently asking how many people kept the clothes from their first child for the next one. I was astounded to see that most of the respondents bought a whole new set of clothes for their next baby. Even if the first set were sold it would still mean a considerable outlay to clothe the next child from scratch. Plus we have to consider the energy, water and raw materials used to make all of these new clothes. This all adds up to create waste of one sort or another.
Whether you make do and mend or buy new clothes, there will come a point when even the youngest child outgrows them, or they become too stained or too full of holes to be wearable any more. You cannot sell these ones or give them away to charity, but there are some things that you can do with them.
I hope you find these suggestions useful. If you have any of your own ideas then please add a comment.
Whether you make do and mend or buy new clothes, there will come a point when even the youngest child outgrows them, or they become too stained or too full of holes to be wearable any more. You cannot sell these ones or give them away to charity, but there are some things that you can do with them.
- Duvet covers and sheets: if you are replacing these big items there are many things that you can do with them. Often the fabric at the edges will be the best preserved even if the centre is wearing very thin, and because the items are so big you will be able to make an outfit or two from them for children. Even with very little sewing experience you can make great elasticated skirts and trousers.
- Jeans: jeans and other trousers are great because they are made with thick material. I have two pairs which are just wearing through on the bum and crotch, but the material on the legs is still in very good condition. This sort of fabric lends itself very well to bags which need to be quite sturdy. For a small bag simply cut off a section of leg and sew one end together, turn the edge under on the other end and then add handles. For a larger one use pieces from two legs. Cut each piece open down the outside leg seam, lay them on top of each other (right sides together) and sew them together at the raw edges down three sides. Turn the seam down at the top and sew in place. Add handles. When you turn it the right way round you will have the inside leg seam running down the middle of the bag which looks quite funky.
- Tops and shirts: a large man's shirt will give you enough fabric to make something for a young child if you are careful with cutting out. Alternatively mix and match fabrics from two or more shirts to make some really funky clothes for little ones. Either make each piece of your pattern from a different fabric (four colour trousers!) or if you have time cut into squares and sew together to make on big piece of patchwork fabric and use this to cut your pattern from. Unless you spend a long time zig-zagging all the edges though you would be best to make something with a lining to prevent the raw edges from fraying.
- Stained baby clothes: these will be small and light fabrics can have some nasty looking brown stains on. You can either turn these into little toys and sew the eyes and mouth over the worst of the stains or cut them up to use as bottom wipes if you have a child in nappies or general cleaning cloths for around the house or kitchen. Have a look at my How to Make a Monster page on Pogglers for instructions on making a toy.
- Other bits and pieces of fabric: you can make little draw string bags for gym or dancing shoes or party bags. Instructions here on Pogglers. Pencil cases out of an oblong of fabric with a zip to close. Even the smallest baby clothes can be turned into even smaller doll's clothes and your children will still be thrilled if your sewing skills only allow you to make a scarf for their favourite toy. I made a teeny tiny hat out of a couple of very small offcuts for my daughter's favoured Eeyore nearly two years ago and he still gets to wear it to bed from time to time!
- Off cuts: you can use your off cuts from various projects to add details to bigger items. Cut out simple motifs like flowers or stars to sew on to bags or even the middle of a childs top to cover up the stains!
- Fleece jackets: cut out the best bits to make children's mittens. To make a template simply draw around their hands leaving a gap of about 1-2 cms all around in order to give their hands room to move inside the glove. Make sure to draw right down to their wrist or else they will be too short. Use the template to cut out four pieces from your fabric leaving another 1.5 cms all around for your seam allowance. Sew two pieces together for each mitten, stopping short of the edge on the thumb side so that they can get their hand in.
I hope you find these suggestions useful. If you have any of your own ideas then please add a comment.
Friday, 28 March 2008
Recycling
Well I think just about everyone now has got the hang of recycling household waste, or at least we know we should. Actually putting it in the recycling container is where some of us slip up! There is a debate going on in the UK at the moment over how rubbish should be paid for. Should it carry on being part of the Council Tax or should there be some new way of measuring household waste?
When we moved to Switzerland we just presumed it was the same as the UK until someone told us we would have to buy the appropriate colour stickers for our bin bags according to the capacity of the bag. If they didn't have a sticker they didn't get taken. Things have changed slightly now in that you actually buy the official bags so they all look the same, rather than having to buy different stickers for different bags and working out if you had put the correct one on. So in effect we pay for the volume of waste that we put out to be collected.
This immediately made us much more careful in what we threw out and what we collected to be taken to the recycling depots. Our rubbish went down enormously when we moved here. Part of that is due to the fact that we buy almost all of our fruit and vegetables from the market, reusing bags from the last time. But mostly it is down to the fact that it is blatantly obvious that if we didn't recycle what we could we would have to pay for about 3 times the amount of bags that we currently do.
We use 35 litre bags and usually put out only one a week. We have a compost bin in the garden for all our raw food waste. I used to put cooked food in it too, but someone told me that wasn't right and also no dairy. Please correct me if I've got that wrong!
We have a big green bucket for garden waste which is collected 1-2 times per month depending on the time of year. We have a paper collection every 2 weeks which has to be bundled neatly with the right sort of string! There is also a metal collection 2 times a year for everything from tin cans to bike frames.
Most supermarkets, even the tiny local ones, have a glass, PET plastic, milk plastic (white bottles) and battery collection point. And in the last year or so local recycling points have been springing up consisting of what looks like pedal bins in the ground with a huge underground container. The children love watching these being emptied as the lorry lifts them right out of their hole and high into the air to be emptied into the lorry.
I must confess that it did take me a while to get used to the idea of taking some recycling with me every time I visited the shops, but when it started dramatically constricting the floor space in our hall I found it easier to remember.
There are also regular clothes collections done by charities. There are not so many charity shops here as in the UK so perhaps this is why the collections work so well. I remember when we used to get one of the bags put through our door in Scotland we hardly ever put anything in it and didn't notice many on the streets on collection day either. But here most houses manage to find something to donate.
Something else that happens here is that if people have things that they no longer need, and perhaps not enough, or not good enough quality to sell, then they just put them outside on the wall with a sign saying 'GRATIS'/'FREE' and people can help themselves. I've seen bookcases, books, chairs, kitchen implements, crockery, ornaments and all sorts of other oddments. And they all get taken eventually.
When we left the UK there were no door to door recycling collections. We could take paper to the supermarket to be recycled but cardboard was not allowed. Glass was pretty easy to recycle, but I had never seen a metal collection and only a few places for drinks bottles, but no other sort of plastic. I believe it has changed a lot in the last couple of years and I would love to hear how it compares to what we have in Switzerland and how people think it could be improved. Please leave a comment!
When we moved to Switzerland we just presumed it was the same as the UK until someone told us we would have to buy the appropriate colour stickers for our bin bags according to the capacity of the bag. If they didn't have a sticker they didn't get taken. Things have changed slightly now in that you actually buy the official bags so they all look the same, rather than having to buy different stickers for different bags and working out if you had put the correct one on. So in effect we pay for the volume of waste that we put out to be collected.
This immediately made us much more careful in what we threw out and what we collected to be taken to the recycling depots. Our rubbish went down enormously when we moved here. Part of that is due to the fact that we buy almost all of our fruit and vegetables from the market, reusing bags from the last time. But mostly it is down to the fact that it is blatantly obvious that if we didn't recycle what we could we would have to pay for about 3 times the amount of bags that we currently do.
We use 35 litre bags and usually put out only one a week. We have a compost bin in the garden for all our raw food waste. I used to put cooked food in it too, but someone told me that wasn't right and also no dairy. Please correct me if I've got that wrong!
We have a big green bucket for garden waste which is collected 1-2 times per month depending on the time of year. We have a paper collection every 2 weeks which has to be bundled neatly with the right sort of string! There is also a metal collection 2 times a year for everything from tin cans to bike frames.
Most supermarkets, even the tiny local ones, have a glass, PET plastic, milk plastic (white bottles) and battery collection point. And in the last year or so local recycling points have been springing up consisting of what looks like pedal bins in the ground with a huge underground container. The children love watching these being emptied as the lorry lifts them right out of their hole and high into the air to be emptied into the lorry.
I must confess that it did take me a while to get used to the idea of taking some recycling with me every time I visited the shops, but when it started dramatically constricting the floor space in our hall I found it easier to remember.
There are also regular clothes collections done by charities. There are not so many charity shops here as in the UK so perhaps this is why the collections work so well. I remember when we used to get one of the bags put through our door in Scotland we hardly ever put anything in it and didn't notice many on the streets on collection day either. But here most houses manage to find something to donate.
Something else that happens here is that if people have things that they no longer need, and perhaps not enough, or not good enough quality to sell, then they just put them outside on the wall with a sign saying 'GRATIS'/'FREE' and people can help themselves. I've seen bookcases, books, chairs, kitchen implements, crockery, ornaments and all sorts of other oddments. And they all get taken eventually.
When we left the UK there were no door to door recycling collections. We could take paper to the supermarket to be recycled but cardboard was not allowed. Glass was pretty easy to recycle, but I had never seen a metal collection and only a few places for drinks bottles, but no other sort of plastic. I believe it has changed a lot in the last couple of years and I would love to hear how it compares to what we have in Switzerland and how people think it could be improved. Please leave a comment!
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