Take your at home sewing projects to a new level of creativity and experimentation.
Upcycling is similar to gold mining... sometimes we stumble on the perfect nugget... other times we fight tooth and nail to bring value back to average overlooked materials.
What almost never happens, is we find a wealthy supply of good looking material, destined for landfill and ready for upcycling.
Until now.
Whether we like it not (which we don’t), soft plastic is rippled throughout everyday life. It’s wound into convenience culture, food & safety regulations and cost efficiencies like freight & logistics.
The good news is; epic companies like Great Wrap have plant-based alternatives to these petrochemical nightmares.
But until these solutions scale through supply chains, we can each play our part to repurpose materials and get creative af with at-home upcycling.
(Ps. We’ve trialled this process with Great Wrap and it works a treat!)
While the idea of recycling soft plastic at home might sound intimidating, the process is not. With a household iron, some baking/parchment paper and a vapour mask (you’ll need to buy one of these), you can turn basic, boring soft plastic into epic sewable materials in just a few minutes.
I recommend starting with thinner materials on a low heat to get a feel for the process, then work your way up to thicker materials through experimentation.
Once you’ve got the fundamentals down, the opportunities for creative experimentation are endless. You can layer different colours, blend in small objects like sewing thread, plant leaves and stickers.
Then put your creations to the test in your next sewing project! When dreaming up your applications, think of the material as behaving similar to piece of paper (not a piece of fabric). Soft single plane curves are great, sharp multilane curves are hard. Eg. Making a cylinder from paper is easy, making a basketball from paper is hard.
So, next time a good-looking piece of plastic packaging catches your eye, stash it aside for your next free arvo and start experimenting with some at-home recycling!
More details and full tutorial available on our website.
Ps. Don’t forget ya mask :)
