I made a huge mega batch of chocolate chip cookies, and I wanted something festive to put them in, so I once again turned to the biscuit tubs from M&S which I made a flowerpot from last year. Funnily enough, I think my mother in law was more impressed with the container than the gift inside! All told, this project cost just a few pennies as it was made from cheap things which I had lying around in my crafting stash. You can have a go yourself using any old container and a pair of jeans, or any fabric.

Recycled Jeans & Plastic Tub Gift Box

You will need:

• 1 old container (plastic, metal, cardboard or whatever)
• 1 pair old jeans
• glue (I used hot glue but craft glue would work fine)
• small bits of felt
• small amount of yarn (I used cheap acrylic yarn)
• crochet hook suited to the size of yarn
• chalk or pencil

Instructions:

1. Cut down the seam of the legs of the jeans and lay them out flat, right side down.
2. Draw around the edges of the container onto the denim with dressmaker’s chalk or pencil.
3. Cut out your pieces and trim to the correct size. Don’t worry if they are not perfect edges, as the edges will be covered with glue & yarn.
4. Glue your denim onto the container to cover all sides.
5. Cut out felt pieces to make decorations, and glue them on.
6. With a crochet hook, make a chain of yarn the same length as the edge of the container. Do the same for all edges you want to cover.
7. Glue the yarn chain to the edges of the container. You’re done!

Instructions on how to make your own recycled sweater wine cosy:

First, a couple of points to note…

• Make sure your chosen sweater (or jumper for us Brits) is 100% wool, and that the label says handwash only. Machine-washable wool will not felt. The size of the sweater is not that important, but I reckon an XL would be too large and an XS might be too small to fit onto a wine bottle. The one shown was a ladies Medium sweater. Ideally the sweater won’t have raglan or massively bulky tapered sleeves. The straighter the sleeves, the better.
• The whole process is a bit experimental: you can’t guarantee exactly what size your item will come out. Even if you can’t make the wine cooler, you could make other items from the felted sweater, such as hotpads / oven mitts, placemats, coasters, or tote bags. Another idea would be to cut both sleeves off, sew them into a long tube and fill them with old socks, underwear or t-shirts to make a draft excluder.

You will need:

• 100% wool sweater
• Old pillowcase
• Safety pins or old shoelace
• Washing machine & detergent
• Scissors
• Bottle of wine or other delicious beverage
• Optional: embroidery floss or yarn and a large needle, needle and thread, felt pieces, fabric glue or heat-n-bond adhesive, sequins, beads or buttons
• Possibly needed: masking tape or lint brush/roller

Steps:

1. Stuff your sweater into an old pillowcase and tie, roughly stitch or safety-pin the pillowcase shut. This will help keep your washing machine from clogging up with little tufts of wool.
2. Chuck it into the machine, and put in a normal amount of laundry detergent, but NO FABRIC SOFTENER. Now put the machine onto the hottest wash cycle and start.
3. Once the cycle has finished, open the case and check your sweater. Try sliding a bottle of wine into the sleeve. If the sweater has not shrunk enough, you may find that it shrinks a bit more if you run it through another wash cycle. If you are scared of it shrinking too much, you can use a Quick Wash or short cycle. Sometimes it won’t shrink any more, though – it really depends on the sweater.
4. When your sweater is finished with the washing part, take it out of the pillowcase and put it somewhere to dry. A radiator is fine.
5. Some sweaters really shed a lot of fluff, so you may need to remove the excess fluff with masking tape or a lint brush when it’s dry.
6. Once dry and fluff-free, you can cut the sleeve off the sweater. Properly felted wool will not fray, so there’s no need to worry about the edges. You can cut the sleeve to whatever size you desire: you may want a short sleeve that just covers the thick part of the bottle, or if you want one like mine, cut it about where the metallic wrapper on the neck starts.
7. Now you can get as creative as you want. You can choose to stop here and leave it as-is, or you can embellish it however you want. For my version, here’s what I did next:

• Sew 4 darts around the top of the sleeve, so the cooler looks more like the shape of the actual bottle.
• Use a blanket stitch to sew around the top edge of the sleeve for a decorative effect.
• Cut out shapes from felt and adhere them to the sleeve with hot-melt iron-on bondable adhesive (or fabric glue).

So I decided to knit an outer shell to cover the tub. I made it with acrylic yarn so it could be removed and washed, and would withstand being left on the patio. But it looked a little plain, as you can see.

I then decided to embroider some cherry blossoms on the outside, to jazz it up and make it look special. I added some matt glass seed beads in a vibrant red to bring the whole project to life. I think it looks really sophisticated with a red pelargonium inside.

This is one of my favourite projects, because I think the results show that recycled stuff doesn’t have to look cheap or all earth-mother-hippy-ish. I can’t imagine how many of these tubs get thrown away every day, when they could be used to make something really pretty. I reckon there’s loads of ways they could be customised, so I will have a think about how I can decorate the next one. And of course it’s another excuse to eat loads of flapjacks and mini swiss rolls. “But I NEED to eat them because I need to use the tub. Honest!”

By far my favourite book has to be the rather wonderfully titled ‘Happy Small Goods of Crochet’, in which I really want to make every single thing. From slippers to shawls to bowls, book covers, bags, hats and loads more. The really cool thing is that Japanese crochet patterns are pictorial rather than written out in sentences, so as long as you know what the stitches look like when drawn, you can follow the patterns… although being able to read hiragana/katakana does come in handy.

My first project from the book I started while I was there, using a Japanese yarn which is also wonderfully titled: it’s called James Dean. What this rebel without a cause had to do with wool is beyond me, but he looks good on a label regardless. Here’s the finished result:

When I get a chance, I think I will line it with the denim bits I had leftover from  making the crochet bowl from jeans. Since I didn’t use the ‘bum’ from the jeans, I think I can sew those ‘cheeks’ together to make a liner for the bag that incorporates the back pockets for handy storage. Sweet.

So when it was my friend Jane’s birthday, I whipped out a mega huge crochet hook, some scissors, and made this groovy denim bowl out of the legs of those jeans. I just cut lengthways back & forth almost to the edge, resulting in a long strip that I crocheted in the round to make the bowl. I increased/decreased on each row to shape the bowl.

I think it looks pretty cool. When I gave it to Jane I filled it with some sachets of homemade bath salts, and I reckon it was a pretty darn good gift.