Repurpose ideas/suggestions? [Archive]

Hattie

2-10-11, 5:44pm

I think Hubby is the best repurposer around. He found an old airplane at the town dump that was for sale. It had crashed at a local airport and was stripped of anything salvagable. All that was left was the body which was cut into 3 pieces. Hubby bought the plane, put it back together, put in some seats, wheels and a new plastic windshield. Someone donated old broken plane instruments and Hubby put those in too. *S* After giving the plane a very cool paint job, he then hooked the tail of the plane up to our windmill. When the wind blows, the windmill turns and the tail of the plane is lifted up and down. Kids love to play in it! They can turn the knobs and pretend they are flying. The only problem we have is explaining why it won't go when it isn't windy. Kids don't understand it is wind powered. *grin* So not only is it repurposed, it is also green.

http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/oo221/rsterne/ATVing/Tigger.jpg

danna

2-10-11, 6:22pm

So cute, green and fun.....

Not as big a project but I just repurposed a lovely corduory skirt that I made 10 years ago that never fit......
The fabric matches my living room chairs so I recovered two worn old back cushion with the material.

In the past I have recovered cushions with all types of skirts of different fabrics (I have had a weight gain issue over the years)
beautiful fabric, some with buttons down the front or pleating detail.

I know I have many more but can't think of them right now..

frugal-one

2-10-11, 8:01pm

Wow... Ingenious ideas!

Hattie

2-10-11, 8:10pm

danna: I really love the idea of using fabric from skirts, etc. to recover furniture. Wish I could sew. *sigh*

Mrs-M

2-12-11, 5:15pm

Hattie

2-12-11, 10:05pm

Super duper ideas everyone!

Hattie. Without incriminating the whereabouts as to where exactly you live (reside), does the community (place) start with the letter "J" and end with the letter "Y"? (Seven letter name)?

Anyhow, love the airplane! What a kid magnet that would be.

Hi Mrs-M - Nope that's not where we live. Our community starts with a "C". *S* Yes the kids love to visit and go for a ride. Even some of the Mom's and Dad's will climb inside. *S*

Mrs-M

2-12-11, 10:38pm

Originally posted by Hattie.
Hi Mrs-M - Nope that's not where we live. Our community starts with a "C".LMAO! :)

early morning

2-14-11, 7:32pm

Love the plane! We re-purpose lots of stuff. My favorite is our small patio table- the top broke, and its replacement is an old (decommissioned, legally acquired) stop sign. Our front porch planter is a small water tank, cut in half lengthwise. Our bird-bath, in the summer, is a trashpicked metal smoking stand topped with a glass bowl or metal basin. We have several small outside tables, sitting in little niches with chairs - one is a wire milk crate, topped with a patio block, and another is a base for a standing sink, with a grindstone as table top. All dragged home from someone else's trash, of course!

fidgiegirl

2-14-11, 10:19pm

I recently had a brainstorm... and it worked great. It was to buy a boot tray and put my large dog's dishes in it. It works GREAT and it looks good too. No more wet floors!

I used to have the same thing. You're right, it was super!!

I love this idea for a thread. Will put on my thinking cap!

fidgiegirl

2-14-11, 10:21pm

I sewed an old tarp into a cover for our firewood. Want to do the same for our sticks. :) My parents think I'm nuts. But there is nothin' like having dry firewood :)

An ancient stepladder was a trellis for squash and pumpkins this last summer.

Stella

2-14-11, 11:22pm

That plane is really cool!

My favourite repurpose (haha! I almost typed re-porpoise. My brain is totally fried tonight.) is my Grandma's punch bowl which I now use as my fruit bowl. It's big enough to hold the mass quantities of fruit my monkey-like children consume on a weekly basis and it's really pretty. I can't think of a single time in 14 years of adulthood I've ever needed a punch bowl, but a fruit bowl is useful everyday.

Mrs-M

2-15-11, 12:29am

Super duper ideas everyone!

Hattie. Without incriminating the whereabouts as to where exactly you live (reside), does the community (place) start with the letter "J" and end with the letter "Y"? (Seven letter name)?

Anyhow, love the airplane! What a kid magnet that would be.Stella. Check out my word boo-boo- "incriminating". Ha-ha!!! And my brain wasn't even fried! :) I meant to type "indicating".

redfox

2-15-11, 12:41pm

danna: I really love the idea of using fabric from skirts, etc. to recover furniture. Wish I could sew. *sigh*

Hattie, learning to sew is not hard! Seriously - I encourage you to ask around to see if you have friends who can teach you the basics, or check out a class at a community college. Start with an apron as a project. You can do it!

Hattie

2-15-11, 3:48pm

Hattie, learning to sew is not hard! Seriously - I encourage you to ask around to see if you have friends who can teach you the basics, or check out a class at a community college. Start with an apron as a project. You can do it!

Thanks for the encouragement redfox. Where I live now there is absolutely no room for a sewing machine. I have thought about buying one and storing it in a closet when not in use, but all our closets are full too. *S* We live in a very tiny house. *S* I do enjoy counted cross stitch and needlepoint but I don't really count that as sewing because someone else has done all the thinking to plan the design. *S* I have always envied people who can look at a piece of scrap fabric and say, "I know what to do with that!" and proceed to make something really beautiful.

Bastelmutti

2-15-11, 4:37pm

Hattie, that plane is SO COOL!!

Our latest re-purpose was taking an old throw rug & putting it at the end of our drive so that the cars wouldn't get stuck in the ice and snow. Worked! (nothing else does - kitty litter, sand, salt don't provide enough traction)

At Christmas, I also helped DD make scarves out of t-shirts. They're actually a non-sewn project - just cut a loop out of a t-shirt, stretch to roll edges & wear around your neck looped once or twice, depending on how large the t-shirt was.

Susan

2-15-11, 5:15pm

My next repurposing may be the holding tank from our boiler into a gravity-fed storage tank to water plants in the basement during the winter. Or two long metal planters. Or a funky piece of art for the yard.

Gardenarian

2-17-11, 5:58pm

My daughter and I re-made some old but pretty t-shirts of hers into bags. We made one sling type backpack and a couple of tote bags. (We didn't use a sewing maching - for small projects I find it easier to sew by hand anyhow.) They are unique and handy for storing the stuff for her different classes (Irish dance, swimming, etc.)

A piece of fabric can be turned into almost anything else made out of fabric; mostly all you need to know is a simple straight stitch to make sheets into curtains, a skirt into a scarf, etc. I love those kind of projects! (Martha Stewarts web site has some great projects.)

DD's Girl Scout troop made pretty bracelets using bits of old fabric and lace. Once they had a simple band they sewed vintage buttons on them and used pony tail holders to fasten them.

I also have a pretty plant in my kitchen that was a sweet potatoe that started to sprout - I stuck it in a little jar of water and now it is a lovely vine.

Blackdog Lin

2-19-11, 7:37am

A light bulb burst over my head a couple of weeks ago, telling me "you have the spot already, why don't you have a "kitchen" garden?"!!! So my next re-purposing project will be turning a decorative garden area into a kitchen garden.

See, we've always gardened, a largish plot out toward the back fence, but I have a landscape-timber-edged 8x10ish plot just 4 steps out the back door. It's always been the "perennial" garden, and over the years I've been slowly adding - and losing - various perennials. Right now it consists of only a small redbud tree, a healthy boxwood, a wild-rose shrub, and a few decorative grasses. Last summer I put my first ever herb out there, and it was so cool to need some basil and just pop out the back door and cut some fresh. So I'm thinking why don't I plant something more useful (and money-saving) than perennial shrubs and flowers? I'm thinking a few herb plants, some lettuces, I already have a cute-but-unused freestanding trellis that might support a pea or bean? I don't know exactly what all right now - but I'm excited about the idea! I think I can make it every bit as "pretty", and a lot more useful.

Float On

2-19-11, 10:22am

I've turned vintage skirts into aprons. I'll turn anything into a planter. I use one of those sewing thread racks to hold necklaces. Probably my favorite repourpose is an old decorative flue piece that I had a mirror cut to fit. Its my favorite mirror.

Hattie

2-19-11, 11:50am

Float On: I LOVE the idea of vintage skirts into aprons. Do you have any pictures of your mirror? It sounds really nice!!

Float On

2-19-11, 5:07pm

http://i1118.photobucket.com/albums/k611/Julsave/005.jpg Sorry so big but here is that mirror.

frugal-one

2-19-11, 5:11pm

That is awesome!

Hattie

2-19-11, 6:49pm

That is really, really pretty. Good eye to turn something that most would throw away into something truly beautiful!!

Mrs-M

1-9-12, 5:29pm

Courtesy of Bastelmutti's thread topic (What cleaning solution for Swiffer)? posted under the Housing forum, two more to add.

Prefold cloth diapers as Swiffer cloth replacement cleaning pads. (Courtesy of a church lady I know).
After the kids graduated from diapers, the diaper pins went straight into my notions box. (Best fixer-uppers, emergency tackers, as good as an extra set of hands "thingamajigs" when working on sewing projects)!

kally

1-9-12, 6:55pm

A friend told me her husband used an old wine carboy (plastic), cut a window in the side, turned it sideways and hung it in the garden as a rotating compost bin.

Mrs-M

1-10-12, 11:15pm

A friend told me her husband used an old wine carboy (plastic), cut a window in the side, turned it sideways and hung it in the garden as a rotating compost bin.Neat-o! The fun/ingenious things people do with regular old standard household items/things.

Maxamillion

1-11-12, 12:26am

I used a plastic tablecloth that I had gotten on sale to recover the seats of my outdoor chairs.

Today while at the craft store I bought four large Christmas gift boxes made out of some sort of smooth cardboard; they were on sale for 90% off. I'm going to stack them to make a doll house. The outside is black and the inside is red with a white snowflake (?) pattern. Eventually I'd like to recover the inside with scrapbook paper, with each "room" having a different pattern.

I used a large white kitty litter container as a flower pot last summer. I pulled off the plastic wrapper, cut off the top, poked some holes in the bottom, added some gravel and then soil. My zinnias really seemed to like it. (The flower pots I made out of 2 liter soda bottles didn't work so well, nothing would grow in them).

I buy second hand clothes with small interesting patterns to make doll clothes. I can find a variety of patterns in knit material from these that I can't find in the fabric stores.

I picked up a baby bottle rack at the thrift store one day for 99 cents. I use it as a thread rack for my larger spools of machine embroidery thread.

I've used seeds from stuff I've gotten at the grocery store to grow plants. Grew some cherry tomatoes one year from seeds from a cherry tomato I had bought. I saved seeds from those plants to plant the next year...and those plants had cherry tomatoes that were shaped different than their parents...they had pointed ends! It was really cool. I've grown a mango from a mango seed (sadly, it ended up dying). And once I grew a beautiful sweet potato plant from a sweet potato I planted--made an absolutely gorgeous house plant.

I'm sure there's more, just can't think of them right now.

Here's a link to a Youtube video where they make solar lights out of plastic soda bottles. :D How cool is that! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ms-oX-kdb8

Mrs-M

1-11-12, 12:44pm

Maxamillion

1-14-12, 7:54am

Wow, Maxamillion! Super ideas!!! Love the doll house idea! (And the baby bottle drying rack is totally nifty)! Reminds me of something that Miss Cellane, posted a while back related to drying Ziploc baggies, and how she stands wooden spoons up in a dish-drainer for that.

Thanks. That's a good idea about drying the ziploc bags. I used to put them over the plastic tines in the dishwasher to dry but I don't have a dishwasher anymore (boy do I miss it!). I don't use them a lot though; mostly I save the plastic containers left over from stuff like sour cream, yogurt, cole slaw, etc. and re-use those. When I do use ziplock bags, it's usually to put cheese in to keep it from drying out.

Here's a picture of my "dollhouse". I ended up going back after I took the picture and bought two more boxes so the dolls wouldn't be as crowded. Total cost--About $5 (they had been about $6-8 each, but were 90% off). They're black and gray on the outside, with this pattern on the inside. I saved the lids from them and I'm trying to decide whether to keep them as is in case I want to use the boxes for storage later or to cut them up to make doll furniture. (In the background you can see part of the bedsheet that I'm using as a curtain too--another repurpose!).

The doll on the the far lower right (wearing the Christmas clothes), I made the clothes for her. The striped tights were made from two t-shirts that I picked up at a thrift store.
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c310/bewilderness/DSCF00092.jpg

Mrs-M

1-14-12, 11:03am

I'm the same Re: Ziploc baggies and things, I rely on reusable food-saver type containers more than anything, but baggies are nice when needed.

I LOVE the dolls and houses!!! The doll (top upper left doll house, middle doll), I love her hot pants! And the doll sitting down (same doll house) is far out! Headband and all! And, the doll (top upper right doll house, far left doll), absolutely love her frayed mini-skirt and glasses! She even sports a clutch, too!!! The detail is great.

Do you make the dolls yourself, too? P.S. I just noticed the goth-chic (lower left doll house). She's almost a splitting image of Lily, from the Munsters! Remember that old show?

Maxamillion

1-14-12, 11:34am

Yup, I remember the Munsters! These dolls are a line called Monster High--I'm completely addicted to them. Lots of other people are too, because they get bought up as soon as they hit the store shelves. Half the time when I check Wal-Mart or Toys-R-Us, the Monster High shelf is empty. I haven't customized one yet, but have thought about it. I've got one (not pictured) that I gave a haircut too, but I've thought about rehairing her with purple and green hair.

Mrs-M

1-14-12, 11:51am

That is great! I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for them the next time I'm out. As I look at the picture more and more, I'm seeing all sorts of new and interesting things related to the appearance of the dolls and their dress. The footwear is outrageous! So cool...

JaneV2.0

1-14-12, 3:50pm

Fashion dolls (Tonner, Silkstone, fifties' Vogue, and NASB) are among my favorite things as well--I hadn't seen Monster High, so thanks for posting that, Maxamillion!

redfox

1-14-12, 4:06pm

My three fav websites for DIY inspiration are ikeahacks, apartment therapy, and Pinterest.

happystuff

1-14-12, 7:16pm

Love this thread! Only repurposed thing that comes to my mind at the moment is a white plastic window plant box that sits on the back of the toilet to hold rolls of tp. Can get at least 4 rolls in there versus usually 2.

Mrs-M

1-14-12, 10:14pm

JaneV2.0. Ditto! Especially fifties vogue!!!

Redfox. I love Apartment Therapy, too!

Happystuff. Super repurpose idea!

Sad Eyed Lady

1-15-12, 10:41am

What a great thread! I love to re-purpose, although my projects have all been small, it is such fun to take something that might be useless and give it a new life.

Also thanks to redfox for mentioning the Apartment Therapy website. I didn't know about it and after just a short tour I have bookmarked it for further study.

Sad Eyed Lady

1-15-12, 10:49am

One re-purposing project I have been doing lately and enjoying so much is making "primitive pillows". I go to a local mission/thrift shop and buy a few pieces of clothing, cotton mostly, then cut the material out the size I need for a small pillow. Tea staining white cotton gives the best results so far, and on it I then embroider something in primitive or child like embroidery. I then add some decorative touches such as whip stitching a heart, small patch or button on the pillow. The backing is a contrasting print, which I sew together with the front, leaving one side open. I then stuff it with poly fill from an old cushion, pin the one side together and stitch it closed with embroidery thread in an X pattern or some similar stitch. I made one for a friend with her grandchildren's names embroidered on it. She loved it and put a picture on her facebook page. Guess what? I got messages from others wanting me to make one for them! So, I have priced them very reasonable and it is a project I enjoy doing anyway.

JaneV2.0

1-15-12, 1:13pm

Thrifted sweaters make good pillows (and I recently saw sleeves used as leg warmers), and wool ones can be felted and used for accessories, bags, etc.

Mrs-M

1-15-12, 1:37pm

The pillows sound darling, Shalom! So creative you are. Every so often I'll come across a preview (in a design magazine) covering a residence, and I'm always awestruck by the sheer number of pillows many designers incorporate into their work. If I had it my way (though added financial means), I'd have pillows gracing every single seating area and arrangement in my home, and in the bedrooms, too.

JaneV2.0. Ditto, sweaters pillows. I've seen a few through pictures, and when done properly they look outstanding. Such a departure from the same old- same old...

redfox

1-15-12, 2:34pm

Also thanks to redfox for mentioning the Apartment Therapy website. I didn't know about it and after just a short tour I have bookmarked it for further study.

House porn. Home DIY crack. You have been warned!
:)

Mrs-M

1-15-12, 3:24pm

Originally posted by Redfox.
House porn. Home DIY crack.Yes! Completely and totally befitting. Super fun way of looking at it :laff:

Sad Eyed Lady

1-15-12, 4:51pm

On the subject of re-purposing, I think I can hit two of Mrs-M's threads here with this one. In the mission/thrift store that I frequent, I happened upon a whole bundle of white battenburg lace cotton curtains. Some were full length, and there were several panels. A few I did use as curtains, but some I used to made wonderful pillowcases. Nice white, crisp pillowcases with a trim of battenburg lace. With your white fetish Mrs-M, I think you would love these!

Mrs-M

1-15-12, 6:09pm

Well, Shalom, if you didn't already garner my attention related to the magnificent pillows you are working on, you really have my undivided attention now after mentioning Battenburg lace! Battenburg tablecloths are (by far) one of my favourite home-front weaknesses. I could literally surround myself with Battenburg lace, through the use of tablecloths, pillows, throws, doilies, and even sheers and curtains!

Please, if you can, post a picture or two when you're done!