October 15th is Blog Action Day and this year’s theme is Climate Change. I thought I would share how I reuse and recycle materials in my studio.

I don’t throw much of anything away. I hang on to the dogs (the boo boo quilts). I keep scraps of all sizes, especially if they are fused. I love to make small compositions from them to jump start my creative juices. Here is one I did earlier this year.

I have a rather large quilt that was made as a prototype for a liturgical commission. The final piece was made from hand-dyed silk so I used cotton for the prototype. It has been languishing in my studio hoping o be repurposed.

I decided to  make some fiber postcards so I cut some pieces from the quilt and removed the stitching. The crosses were lightly fused and not stitched so they were easy to remove.

I stitched the backgrounds in variegated thread. For one, I used the crosses turned to look like and X. For the other, I used some of my aspen scraps. You can see the resulting postcards at the top. I glue them to watercolor paper preprinted postcards, and they will get a zigzag stitch around the edges.

Here are some other things that I do to reuse, reduce and recycle. I like to buy used silk clothing with interesting prints and colors such as this piece.

I save plastic squeeze bottles and containers to hold paints and dyes. I save bubble wrap and mesh bags to use for printing and texture.

And here is another fun idea. These are dryer sheets that my friend, Kathy, dyed and painted.

These are all fun ideas, but the most important thing is that we get our government to become involved in climate change in a big way. Join me in signing this petition asking the us to act on climate change.