Because 2 days is never enough.

I recently finished a fascinating, alarming book by Elizabeth Royte called, Garbageland. I’m haunted by the book; I can’t think about anything that I buy, chuck, or recycle, without obsessing about the consequences.

For Christmas, my mom gave us a new cover for our sofa and it looks great; I feel like we have a whole new piece of furniture. And I wanted to buy some new throw pillows to gussy it up some. But the old sofa cover filled several trash bags. And I just imagined that something perfectly reusable, some worn fabric, would just hang out, in perpetuity in a leaching, ever growing heap of trash.

I was also thinking about how, for every bag of trash we throw away, there are about 36 bags of trash produced “upstream”, meaning in manufacturing and delivery, so I decided to try to stop buying so much stuff. But, instead of just feeling bad, I hatched a fantastic idea.

I decided to hack up the huge pile of heavy twill from the old cover and sew it into three pillows, stuffing them with the shreds. In the end, I was left with just the seams of the old sofa cover, which were too stiff to use.

Then I went to purlsoho and bought some awesome Japanese fabrics and made some great covers.

I’m so happy with myself, if I do say so myself. I made something pretty, and crafty, averted some trash from the land fill, and kept myself from buying something (the pillows) and bearing the responsibility for all the waste involved with that.
Sure, this won’t save the world, but it made my living room look super cute, guilt free!