Got an old sweater that doesn’t fit you anymore? Instead of tossing it out, up-cycle it into a new sweater vest for a little tyke. Dana over at Made created this awesome tutorial with incredible images on how to do just this.

Supplies Needed:

• Man’s or Woman’s Sweater
• 1/4 yard knit ribbing (Ribbing is simply knit fabric with ribs in it. You can find it in most fabric stores, sold on bolts.)

Dana used a sweater vest her son already owned as a guideline. If you don’t have a sweater vest, use one of your son’s shirts as your guide. If there’s a nice waistband on the sweater, you’ll want to use that for your vest. So lay the vest on the bottom.

Cut out a front & back, similar to the store-bought vest and add an extra 1/2 inch at the shoulders and the side seams, where the vest will be sewn together.You do NOT need to add extra on the arm holes or the neckline. These will be sandwiched in with binding.

Measure around all four arm holes, add up the total of these measurements and cut a strip of ribbing that entire length, and about 2-3 inches wide (depending on how wide you want your binding to be.) Iron the entire strip in half. Then open it back up and iron over each side about 1/4 inch-1/2 inch down. When you’re done it should look like this.

Then cut that strip into 4 pieces so you have a binding for each shoulder piece. Take each binding strip and sandwich each arm hole inside of the binding.  Pin the binding down.

Then sew down each binding, close to the edge or about 1/4 inch from the edge of the binding. When you’re done it should look like the photo on the right.

With the right sides of the vest together, pin the front and back together at the shoulders. It’s very important that you match up the yellow binding pieces as best as you can at the shoulder so it looks like one continuous binding. Then sew the shoulders together and serge off the seams.

Your vest should look like this.

Now, onto the neck binding. With the same method used for the armhole binding, measure around your entire neck (front & back) and add an extra inch for the seam. Cut a long strip of ribbing that length of your entire neck and about 2-3 inches wide (however wide you made the arm hole bindings). Iron everything, using the same method as you did for the arms.

Now to make the “V”. Cut the binding into two pieces. Then, place your bindings on the neck, right where it will lay and fold the end of the binding over so that it makes a straight line, running right into the “V” of your neck. And cut along that straight line, like this.

Make sure you do that for the binding on both sides. When you unfold the binding pieces. With the right sides together, sew the two binding pieces together.

Turn everything right-side out (make sure you push those little angled pieces out. And when you fold everything back over it should look like this.

Start by Sandwiching the “V” of the vest right inside the “V” of the binding and pin it down. Then, move on and sandwich the rest of the binding around the neck and pin down.

When you get to the back of the vest lay one binding over the other so you can get an exact measurement of where it should close. We don’t want the binding to be too loose, or it will gather up. So…Cut it where the bindings overlap a 1/2 inch.

Then, unfold those two binding pieces together and with the right sides together, sew the two binding pieces together. Fold them back up, sandwich and pin the back of the binding to the vest, and add a label if you’d like. Almost done here! Similar to how you sewed the sleeve bindings above, sew the neck binding on close to the edge or about 1/4 inch from the edge of the binding.

Final step! With the right sides for the vest together, pin down both sides of the vest (and add a tag if you like). It’s very important that you match up the yellow binding pieces as best as you can at armhole so that it looks like one continuous binding.

Sew down each side, serge off the seams (if you don’t have a serger, zigzag or leave them raw). And….You’re done!

Thanks Dana! Your little man is the cutest in this recycled man’s sweater!

Got an old pair of jeans that don’t fit any more? Why not make them into a brand new bag. It’s fun, easy & a great way to upcycle durable fabric like denim. Here’s how to do it…

Thanks to se7en for sharing their awesome eco-crafts with us.

Reuse your used coffee grounds as fertilizer!

Coffee grounds make a great fertilizer for plants that thrive in acidic soil, like rhododendrons or azaleas. Just sprinkle your used coffee grounds around the base of plants. This will also help to repel ants, snails, and slugs, who can exacerbate an aphid problem.

Here is a really cool craft project that recycles old glass bottles from beer or soda and turns them into new trendy drinking glasses.

The project isn’t that difficult, but it does requires some precision & a few tools you most likely don’t have around the house.

Tools

• Glass cutting wheel
• Bottle cutting jig
• Small butane torch
• “Lazy Susan” or other rotating platform
• Scrap of plate glass at least 8×8″

Materials

• A suitable glass bottle to cut
• 400 grit silicon carbide wet/dry sandpaper
• Bulk silicon carbide grit (at least 80 mesh)
• Tap water
• Oil for glass cutting wheel

Step 1: Select a bottle

Step 2: Score the bottle
After choosing your bottle, the next step is to score the glass for cutting. This is where a bottle cutting jig comes in handy. Essentially you will roll the bottle in the jig creating a scoreline.

Step 3: Apply heat
Once you’ve made a scoreline, position the bottle on a Lazy Susan and apply heat using a small butane torch. Set the torch slightly above the scoreline and rotate the Lazy Susan with your free hand. You will hear click and pops as the glass literally breaks. Go slow, be patient and be careful. You should be wearing your safety goggles at this point.

Step 4: Polish the edge
Now that you’ve cut the bottle, you’ll want to polish the edge. This is called “lapping.” Drop a pinch of grit on a piece of glass or even a mirror and lightly wet it using a spray bottle. Then, with the bottom of the bottle facing up, make a figure-eight motion in the grit. This can be sensitive to the ears, like nails on a chalkboard, so you may want to wear have earplugs or play loud, heavy metal music.

Step 5: Round over the corners
Finally, it’s time to round the corners. This is done simply by rubbing your silicon carbide sandpaper along the edges. Do this gently and carefully, until you can smoothly run your fingers around the edge.

The tools that are involved are an investment, but once you get the hang of it I’m sure you’ll think of lots of uses to up-cycle all those old bottles into beautiful new creations.

A special thanks to Make Magazine & Apartment Therapy for the detailed how to guide.

A lot of your favorite household products are recyclable. Products such as aluminum foil are often overlooked, but can be thrown in the recycling bin along with the cans, newspapers & glass.

According to the Aluminum Association, Americans toss out enough aluminum every 3 months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.

So, the next time you use aluminum foil…don’t forget to toss it into the recycling bin!

This Valentine’s Day instead of buying fresh cut flowers that only last a few days and are totally full of pesticide toxins -  Make your sweetie flowers that are eco-friendly because they are made from some extra scrap fabric and will last for years. Here is a great how-to guide by Becky Striepe over at Green Upgrader.

What you’ll need:

• A few pieces of long fabric scraps
• floral wire
• pinking shears
• felt
• needle
• thread
• fabric glue
• A couple of vintage buttons

How to make it:

To get started, use your pinking shears to cut your scraps into strips that are about an inch wide and four to eight inches long. There are two ways you can put these little guys together, depending on the size of your scraps. Either fold the scraps in half and layer them loop-side out, or cut longer scraps, and fold the ends into the center. Either way, you end up with a similar result which you’ll secure into place with a straight pin:

I opted to bunch some tulle scraps that I had behind the first flower and use the same tulle gathered on top of the second one. I think it makes it feel a little more romantic, but it’s totally optional.

Now sew a few stitches through the center, being careful to trap all of the fabric. Once everything is secure, you can remove the pin and sew a button onto the front!

You’re almost done! Grab that piece of floral wire, fold it in half off center, and make a 1″ loop on each of the ends. Now, cut yourself a couple of small pieces of felt, maybe around 1.5″ square, and apply a generous amount of fabric glue. Your goal here is to sandwich the loop of wire between the back of the flower and the felt. Once the glue dries, it will also make your flower’s head a little more sturdy without adding too much weight:

The glue will probably need to set overnight to dry completely. Once it’s dry, you have a couple of options! I dug out a vintage wooden spool of thread and used that as my “vase.” You could also put your bouquet into a small pot or vintage teacup full of rocks or marbles. If you want to treat it more like a traditional bouquet, you can wrap the base in some pretty ribbon, and secure it with a decorative straight pin!

A BIG thanks to Becky Striepe over at Green Upgrader for sharing her awesome eco-friendly flowers with us!

Tweedle Press is a full-service design, papermaking, and letterpress print shop that uses eco-friendly materials while still creating stylish, quirky paper goods.

Everything about Tweedle Press is Green – including their paper, inks, packaging, & even electricity.

Paper - Tweedle Press uses a wide array of 100% recycled paper fibers & 100% recovered cotton rag.  Sometimes adding dried flowers, spices, textures, and other random materials.

Inks - Tweedle Press inks are combination of hand mixed vegetable ink colors and pre-mixed linseed oil based etching inks with a high pigment degree.

Packaging – Tweedle Press packaging materials are also as ‘low impact’ as possible, meaning recycled boxes, hemp twines, etc.

Electricity - Tweedle Press is almost entirely ‘hand-powered’. Electricity is necessary for computer design and plate making, but all of the actual pressing is hand-cranked.

Tweedle Press is really fun & funky. I just love that they take junk mail and up-cycle it into invites, RSVP’s, placecards, nametags, menus, programs, stationery, business cards & much more.

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. This year make your sweetheart a pop up Valentine’s Day card from old magazines & cardboard. Here is a great video tutorial for making your own Valentine’s Day card.

Ok – so there are a couple of supplies in the video that need a little greening up to make this a really eco-friendly craft. First, it looks like she’s got a brand new envelope, but I’m sure you could round up a used one or otherwise, any light, scrap cardboard like cereal boxes, beer boxes, or frozen food containers.

Also, I’m not a big fan of spray adhesives. You might use a glue stick, or a more eco-friendly product like Ecoglue.

If you don’t have any magazines lying around, get creative…you can really use anything like old posters, books or even junk mail.

Show your love this year to all your friends & family with this DIY Valentine’s Day Pop Up Card…They’ll love it!

Thrift store shopping is a great way to practice your 3 R’s – reduce, reuse, and recycle.

• Reduce – Purchasing a used item rather than a new one reduces the amount of new inputs to the environment. It also keeps all of those items that were in thrift store out of landfills.
• Reuse – Most items at thrift stores are in good condition and can be reused. Children’s clothing and toys are especially good examples of this – most children only wear their clothes for a limited amount of time before they are outgrown. In addition, some stores such as Plato’s Closet specialize in gently-used high-end clothing.
• Recycle – Thrift-store items can be recycled, or should I say up-cycled! Thrift-store goods can be given a second life by being turning into something new. Like home furnishings (pillow covers, curtains, etc.), kid’s dress-up outfits, Halloween costumes, and outdoor work clothes.

Want to know just about everything & anything Green? Well, now you can with this incredible list by Mashable.

The list includes 100+ sites that give information on everything green. Things like how to lower your carbon footprint, places to find eco-friendly shopping, communities to meet others & discuss the current topics and even dating sites where you can find other tree-huggers that are looking to mingle.

This list is pretty awesome & a great resource for anyone looking for a little Green knowledge. Check it out:  100+ Sites for Green Living