I'm riding the Up-cycle

Today's project is an interesting use of what was once a pair of pants.  I love to up-cycle things.  That is take something that has lost the ability to be of any use in it's current state, and recreate it in another way.  I had a pair of pants, that got ripped in an unfortunate place.  I could have fixed them, but it would have been obvious, and made the garment look worse not better, so I cut of the legs and created a bag out of it, that I still use today.  It's great, and has pockets just where I want them and it's really sturdy.

Today's project is to make some small pouch bags out of the legs.  I kept them just in case.  I also have an old jacket, the zippers broken and it's misshapen in parts.  However most the pattern on it is beautiful and I'll be using it to embellish the bag.  As well I have an old velvet pillow case that someone had used as a table cloth.  There is candle-wax all over it, and taking it off the fabric is difficult at best because of the nap, however I can cut around the wax and have enough to line the little bags.  I'll be making each one differently, but there will be similar elements to all.

In the above photo you can see a little of the damage on the pillow slip where I tried to remove the wax.  There is still plenty of fabric.

This is a closeup of the pattern on my old jacket, it's got a lot of potential, and is dark black.  I lightened up the picture so the pattern would be clear.  

And as you can tell here, these are my old corduroy's.  They were lovely once and will be lovely again.

So this is my project over the next few days... I've got my sewing machine out and I'm ready to use  my threads... :D