Crafting a Green World

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Kirin & Co is the online shop of designer and textile artist Lara Cameron of Melbourne, Australia. Cameron produces limited edition, hand screen printed fabrics as well as handmade items such as super-fab clutch purses.

Cameron prints on two types of fabrics: a cotton/linen blend printed with environmentally friendly inks, and a new hemp/organic cotton blend. The cotton/linen blend isn’t as green as we usually look for in the Fabulous Fabrics series, but Cameron is definitely making efforts to green her fabrics and we respect that. It isn’t always easy or possible to green everything overnight! Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a big sucker for silver jewelry. I don’t often wear very much of it, but every once in a while I come across a piece that I absolutely love and must have. In a store, that I found this past week, was a basket full of rings. Not just any rings, but rings made from old cutlery; rings made from the ends of spoons and the tines of forks.

I know spoon wear has been around for a while, but it’s one of those things that I always forget about until confronted with it. It is a very clever craft that recycles the ordinary and turns it into the extraordinary. Thinking that these rings are the cat’s meow I purchased a fork ring which now sits comfortably on my hand.

Want one of your own? A quick trip through Etsy brought up a couple of designers that specialize in this area and are doing a fantastic job of it.

LT Creates Jewelry makes many wonderful items out of cutlery. Rings, bracelets and even watches made from spoons and forks can be found in their shop.

Dank Artistry also makes spoon jewelry. Check out the rings, bracelets, earrings and even bell pendants made from the end of a spoon and given a clapper. I can hear the small ting, ting that it would make.

Have a piece of cutlery you wear? Tell us about it in the comments.

Image credit: LTCreatesJewelry

The other day my very crafty neighbor came in my back yard and handed me a magical book called Generation T 108 Ways To Transform a T-Shirt, to which I immediately became all drooly over and enthralled. This book has been out since 2006 and was written by a kick ass lady in Brooklyn who would host Tee Parties! Everyone got to bring over their old useless t-shirts and learn to transform them into fabulous designer (and not so designer) outfits & accessories. 

Since I am learning to sew (better) right now and actually don’t own t-shirts I want to cut up I decided to delve into the saucy project #69 “Cinch City” with some organic cotton scrap fabric. I bought my organic cotton for $2 downtown Asheville NC where the Spiritex warehouse sells off the leftovers from their locally woven organic fabric production. (Major score!) The “Cinch City” skirt truly was easy, although they say to only cut one rectangle to make the tube skirt, I actually had to go back in and make more of an angle to fit my waist. To make this skirt all you need is a swatch of organic or upcycled fabric big enough to wrap around your waist & hip, a ribbon, and the most basic sewing skills. It really inspired me to use more drawstring and cinching in my sewing for decorative effect! You can get super creative with this simple design too by making a longer more sultry skirt, instead of the Vegas style mini- or even adding a drawstring cinch at the waistline too so that you can fluctuate in weight and still sport your skirt, well, forever. Read the rest of this entry »

We are really, really, really trying to make most of our baby’s solid food instead of buying it in tiny glass jars. But apparently you’re not supposed to make your own carrots or spinach because of some issue with nitrate levels, and he really likes carrots and spinach, so we are generating a number of jars around here.

The lids don’t fit properly once they’re opened, which is a shame, or I could use them to store the food we’re making. The necks are smaller than the jars, which makes it annoying to feed him out of them, or I could use them as dishes. (Might do that anyway, actually, since we tossed out all the plastic in the kitchen a while back thanks to reports about safety issues on our sister blog Eco Child’s Play.)

While I investigate other brands in hopes of better reusability, what the heck can I do with all these bitty jars? Read the rest of this entry »

My pick for a sustainable, green, yearn worthy-ness yarn for this week is a plant fiber. Yup plant, not animal like yak or quivit or just plain old sheep.

This week I’ve been hunting down linen.

Linen is that elusive fiber that I sometimes come across in interesting summertime knitting patterns for open weave shirts, tunics and shawls. I always make a mental note of it, thinking, huh linen. But I’ve never actually made anything with it.

Linen itself is harvested from the flax plant which produces long and strong fibers known as linen. It has a natural luster and is found in creamy white to tan and can easily be dyed other colors. It is mostly known for bedding and towels made from the strong fabric that is created when the linen is woven.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mooove over acrylics, milk paint is back. In recent years, this medium has been popular for historical furniture reproduction, and even as a natural alternative to latex for interior walls, but have you considered using it for your latest DIY creation?

Found in everything from cave paintings to King Tut’s tomb, this handmade substance was a predominate component in decorative art for at least a few millenia, until the industrial revolution came along. Casein, the protein found in milk, makes an extremely durable binder for pigments to adhere to most porous surfaces. The rustic finish is not usually desirable for fine art, and it fell out of favor all together with the advent of convenient, but far more volatile, canned paint.

High demand in the home improvement market for water-based low or no VOC coatings has brought eco-friendly technology to mainstream retail stores, but I have yet to see it available in the small sizes that artists and crafters lean towards. Read the rest of this entry »

Tenfold Organic Textiles bills themselves as “specialists in providing naturally dyed organic cotton products.” In addition to towels and women and men’s clothing, they also sell their organic fabrics by the yard. Tenfold Organic Textiles was founded in January 2006 to provide organic fabric to consumers, manufacturers, and retailers.

Their fabric is a 200 thread count plain weave cotton, which they recommend for quilts, clothing, and bedding. Currently the only fabric colors available are solids: madder red, pom orange, myra yellow, kasam olive, ash pink, bark brown, soot black, and sun white. Read the rest of this entry »

Steampunk, a genre combining future living with the romance of the Victorian era, started to come to prominence in the 1980’s. Influenced by fantasy and science fiction writing, and inventions for time-travel by H. G. Wells, steampunk has started to trickle into the mainstream in recent years.

It has gone beyond being relegated to the novel and expanded into all other aspects of art and design, making it’s way into fashion as well. The style is most often characterized by the use of found and repurposed objects, open circuitry and exposed gear cogs. There is also a blog devoted to all things steampunk called The Steampunk Workshop.

The mentality of do-it-yourself, that is pervasive within steampunk, is what helps this aesthetic cross into green culture. The clothes, jewelry and moded phones and computers are all created with vintage or thrifted items to achieve the proper “look.”

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 If you are looking for a yarn store online that will check all the eco approved boxes, this is it! Knit For Brains  (a name that makes me giggle) carries all natural fiber yarns that are not only made of yummy fibers such as soy, corn, banana, milk, organic cotton and bamboo but they are all cruelty free or %100 vegan.  Being that I had never crocheted with a yarn so edible and luxurious I had to order some soy and banana fiber yarns from them. You’re not really supposed to eat this stuff (even though half of them are also names of stir fry ingredients), but my kitty did think the soy was delicious and slurped some of it up like spaghetti!

Corn, soy and bamboo are all very similar in texture and feel, being very smooth, silky and soft. The soy was totally easy to work with, in fact it was like a crochet dream come true - it never got caught on the hook like the funky acrylics do, it pulled through so easy my project went twice as fast, and the end product was soft and pretty.  I didn’t get to try my banana fiber yarn yet, but the texture is really fascinating - it looks a little wild, frayed and fun…could possibly get caught on the hook? Read the rest of this entry »

Mmmmm. Alpaca. Can anyone get enough of super soft and sweet alpaca yarn? It feels like a dream to knit up and your finished product is warm and cuddly.

Frog Tree, another one of those great companies like Be Sweet and Conserve, supplies wonderful hand spun alpaca yarns. Their mission is “to supply meaningful and continuous work to various artisans and non-profit groups.”

Their alpaca yarn is made by a non-profit cooperative based in Bolivia, who also trains women to make hand knit items made from the yarn. Their yarn has become so popular that they needed to expand their cooperative to Peru.

Read the rest of this entry »