Earth Day Crafts

If you’ve read this blog for a while, you may wonder why I don’t write about crafts with my kids as much these days. Well, they are getting older and I am busier, but they are still making things constantly, mostly on their own now. I need to share more of their creations. But almost all of their craft projects are made from recycled materials. I just heard one of my daughters the other day trading something with the other for a large cardboard box that had come in the mail. My older daughter has a “Main Street” running through her room with her cardboard houses and stores for her Bebichhichi dolls. And the younger one had a friend over for a playdate to make cardboard Barbie cruise ships. Cardboard and a little imagination goes a long way, as we saw with Caine’s Arcade.

Anyway, for Earth Day I thought I’d share some of our crafts from the past using recycled materials. Pictured above:

Cap Stamps

Clothesline Caddy

T-shirt Weaving

Cereal Box Journals

Paper Globes

Melted Vinyl Bowls

Plantable Paper

Firefly Jars

Sweater Flowers

Flying Geese Coasters

When I was designing the Quilt Blocks collection, I really wanted to make fabrics that you could use for all kinds of projects, not just quilting. I think the best thing about the fabrics is that they really don’t need to be cut up and sewn together to make geometric patterns, but here I’ve taken the flying geese fabric design and cut it up anyway! These coasters are patchwork, made from all three colorways of this pattern, which I called “Flying Stripe”, inspired by flying geese and a ticking stripe.

These are pretty similar to the Pieced Coasters that I made here. Just cut into 1″ strips with a ruler. You can read more details and see process photos over at Stumbles and Stitches. They are featuring some great projects in their Feather Your Nest series, as well as organizing ideas and peeks into the homes of creative people.