Do you often think about reducing waste, repurposing materials and using only as much as you need when you sew?
I wanted to share a quick tip on how I reuse paper for printing my sewing patters: I use old magazines, brochures or snail mail. Most of them come in A4 paper, so I take out the staples and cut them into single A4 sheets. Or most likely rip them apart in single A4 sheets 🙂
I make sure they’re not bent or soiled in any way, then put them through my printer, like I would with normal fax/print paper. I know many of you will say that the images on the magazines are distracting, but if you really like to double the life of a few sheets of paper, you’ll see it’s really not that difficult to see the lines and cut your pattern.
For my future Mesa dress from Seamwork I used the brochure from out trip to Niagara falls this summer 🙂
There’s a version of this brochure online, if we ever need it again and in the meantime, there’s a large percentage of the paper from this brochure that’s being reused instead of being binned.
Do you have any green sewing tips yourself?
Great idea!!! Thanks for sharing! Let’s see, my green sewing tip is that I cut muslins down to do new muslins– so, the skirt of an old muslin becomes the bodice of a new one, and a bodice becomes a collar detail or pocket or something. I always felt so badly about making a muslin just to chuck it out, so this is a nice alternative. And now my school recycles muslin, so when it’s impossible to cut it down more, I bag it and take it to school. 🙂
That’s a great idea! I often don’t make muslins because of the same reason, but what you’re doing sounds perfect!