Not exactly a clothing refashion....

But it's related to one, sort of. I meant to get this scrap project up in time for the book giveaway, but ran out of time before going out of town and didn't get it finished till late last week. One of the editors kindly said I could share this anyway, so here goes!

I made this patchwork bag, mostly out of some fabric samples that I was given for free several years ago, only about a square foot (if that) of fabric so it's been hard to find uses for a lot of them. Though some of it is also clothing leftovers--the black floral fabric is the bottom of a thrifted dress-to-top refashion I did before I even had my blog, and the white fabric with the blue and green sunflowers is scrap leftover from a from-scratch skirt I made a couple of years ago.

As for the inside, it's fabric that was originally on the ceiling, and then curtains in front of my closet, from my old bedroom. (Muslin that I'd dyed and batiked to try and resemble a starry sky. Except it ended up much more purple than I'd intended. Still have a ton of this to use up, too....) The drawstrings are also leftover from another from-scratch project, cording that I used to make piping.

And this is what's inside--a yarn swift that I picked up from Etsy a couple of months ago. Mainly to help me turn things like this....

(Ugly thrift store sweaters)

....into this.

The story: I picked up knitting at the beginning of the year to give me something more portable to do when hanging out with crafty friends than lugging my sewing machine around. I've avoided it for years, partially because I have a major wool sensitivity and most of the cool yarns seem to be made out of it. Then I discovered that one sweater I've had for years has a small percentage of wool in it, and it's never bothered me. So I picked up these three sweaters, all of which have low percentages of animal-hair content (rabbit hair, wool and a wool/mohair mix) to unravel and see how I do with handling the yarn. Two of the sweaters are entirely deconstructed, I still have a few pieces of the grey one left to unravel. But once I get a few other projects out of the way, I'm hoping to do a little refashioning with my recycled yarn! (Also, this could get addicting, getting an entire sweaters' worth of yarn for $3.50 a pop.... I've discovered that the unraveling is kind of fun, now that I have the swift and a ball winder!)