13 Ideas for Textile Recycling DIY and Fabric Scrap Crafts

Oct 21

Written By Dori

Don’t throw away your fabric waste, reuse your fabric scraps!

There are many ways you can be ethical when sewing, creating, making, crafting. It can be by taking your old clothes you are bored with and reconstruct them by chopping off their bits, embellish them with 3D design or update them with funky zips, perhaps slogans for example. You can also get brand new items on sales and use it as a base for your next project. You can go to thrift stores for the same, or searching in second hand fabric stores, although it can be a hit and miss but still worth it.

DIY clothes making from dead stock materials are very popular amongst young designers and fashion influencers, dead stocks are those textiles that are not been accepted by fashion houses, although it is still not obvious why they refuse them whether they are not chemically as clean or because they have damages, however many companies create items from dead stock and it could be for you too.

If grabbing second hand stores fashion clothing, dead stock materials are not your thing, head to your local fabric stores for affordable good quality textiles. Pieces of length can come anywhere between 10 cm to 3 metre, the beauty is that one qualifies something being too small to make something out of it, can be enough for someone else for a whole entire project. That is what I do most of the time! I use up my scraps and remnants from other projects or search in fabric stores to create smaller items that are often easier and faster to sew. Don’t throw away your fabric craps, you can saw many small beginner projects out of them, like hair accessories, belts, doll clothing, and home and lifestyle products.

I have 13 DIY fabric ideas, easy sewing projects you can do from small textile pieces or from fabric leftovers.

Add an accent front pocket
It’s one of the funnest and easiest refashion DIY ideas when recycling your old clothes.

2. Bio shopper bags for veggies and fruits

Days of plastic bags should be long gone, sadly it is still a battle however progress made every day. Be sustainably stylish at your local grocery stores and show off your handmade eco packages.

3. Make pop art from fabric scraps & fabric remnants

Spice up your old clothes. Cut out different colors and shapes of color pop & pop art inspired motifs and sew the fabric pieces to your clothes. There are many ideas to take, like lips shapes, hearts and all geometric ones for example zig zag which is one of the best looking.

4. Fabric Book Mark

Use the tutorial to make a Fabric Corner Book Mark ( click here ). Only requires a few inches of textiles to create something unique. It could be a perfect complementing details along with your matching curtains and cushion to your countryside kitchen.

5. Key Chain & Key Ring

( tutorial here ) Easy and fun way to make a useful gift.

6. Scrunchies

No sewing tutorial listing would be complete without scrunchy diy. I really love the oversized 90s inspired scrunchies - click here to follow the steps - you can reuse your old fashion items, or use up your leftover materials from other creative projects. Make it big or small, metallic or velvet, make one or hundred.

7. Tea towel

You are looking to perk up your kitchen with matching tea towels to your design ? Tea towel DIYs are easy to follow and we can never enough kitchen towels in different sizes, follow this DIY to see how to sew finish off the edges.

8. Jar toppers - cutest

Is there any other way to make your pantry and your kitchen cupboard than with the cutest jar toppers? So so adorable and cute and perfect to spice up any kitchen with a homey vibe.

9. Wall art from fabric scraps

Gather together all your fabric scraps and cut out petals, abstract shapes or create a map where each fabric left over represents a country, like this. So so creative and special sewing DIY.

10. Make Up Bag

DIY your own custom made cosmetic bag. Perfect little beginner sewing DIY, that only needs a little bit of fabric and a zip.

11. Mini Belt Bags

Looking for bold & bright unusual clothing sewing tutorial? You only need a little bit of glitter felt material and basic beginner sewing skills to make this DIY fashion accessory which is unlike anything you normally see in stores.

Bring back lip print & heart shaped with colorful fashion DIYs and spice it up with more custom made alphabet mini belt bags on your chain. Check out the DIY.

12. Funny Pillows

Pillows, throw cushions..we always need them, having DIY pillows around are the easiest way to spice up a room and turn your couch around in a second. Sewing pillow cases don’t require big chunks of fabric, and if you have only small pieces of textile leftovers then it can be suitable idea for a patch work style cushion cover sewing DIY project.

13. Flower Brooches

Follow this DIY fabric tutorial to make beautiful fabric roses with the individual petal method, once rose flower heads are ready just add a pin and ready to go on your coat to spice it up.

Being able to use up fabric scraps and waste materials is a thankful process. With creativity and seeking the DIY clothes making tips you like along checking out some DIY recycling ideas, searching for textile repurposing there are many ways we can utilise these tiny little pieces of fabrics that otherwise would have been binned to create amazing, useful and customised things out of them.

Keep firing up your machines and continue the good work.

Let me know your ideas so we can keep adding to the abundance of the listing? What do you make out of leftovers fabrics and how to give life to seemingly waste materials?