Waste Paper

With the Eco - movement, is there such a thing as waste paper?  If you are old enough -- and that means if you went to school in the 1960's or the decade earlier, there was such a thing as a waste paper basket in every class room.  It was simply called a waste paper basket as a nice version of garbage pail...  Everything went into that pail, apple cores, broken pencils and reams and reams of paper.  There was not a recycyle bin in those days.  Those were very rich and wasteful years, because before that, in the 1930's and 40's my mother told me  that if you wrote a letter to someone you would write it in pencil so that the receiver could erase what you wrote and write a letter on the same paper and send it back to you or onto someone else.  The Depression Years taught alot of people how to reuse and recycle.  Then we promptly forgot it in the 50's and 60's and even into the 70's...

Something clicked into our psyche in the 80's and the movement to save our enviroment began to gain some steam.   Now, we don't think we HAVE to recycle or remake, or reuse things, but many of us choose to do that sort of thing because we don't want to waste what we have, just in case we run out of the raw materials, or at least to prolong the time until we do run out...

Now, that is alot of deep thinking for my latest project...

My hubby delivers daily newspapers every single night, he goes to pick up his stacks of papers at 1am and is home around 5am, having delivered some 200 or so papers in time for the subscribers to read their morning paper along with sipping their first cup of coffee of the day...

Those newspapers come in a variety of bundles wrapped in brown craft paper -- he gets 2 or 3 sheets of this brown paper every single night.   It has been weighing on my mind that this paper goes into the recycle bin once he has opened up his bundles...

So, I have been formulating an idea of what I can use this paper for...
I cut the sections of brown paper into 4 inch wide strips that are about 15 inches long.  I have been getting 6 of these strips from each piece of brown paper.   I even take the time to iron the pieces of 4" x 15" sections so they are nice and flat and not too wrinkledy...
I works quite well.   Some of the brown paper gets smudges -- which is what it is supposed to do, to protected the daily newspaper (who wants wet or ripped newspapers?)

Then once the pieces I have cut are nice and smooth, I stack 4 together and sew, using a heavier type thread down the middle and fold over to make "Pages".   I find that I can do 4 sets of these and I even sew the last page of one set to the first page of the next set.   You can only to 4 sets together because the foot I have doesn't do too well when one side of the seam is quite "high" while trying to sew two pieces of paper together...

I also use big stitches, if the stitches are too small, they just cut the paper.  

So, Now I am into making these little booklets, that have become great list making booklets.   We use them for grocery lists, mostly, but also for what needs to be cleaned lists...  Lists of marks to keep track of knitting rows, decreases and increases.  Lists of quilt block pieces, and lists of things in my etsy store. 

Then I had one of those "LIGHT BULB" moments.... I had  the idea because I found for only 50 cents at the second hand store that fusible stuff for fabric, that doesn't come with paper backing -- I think one of the brand names for it is Misty Fuse.  So, the bright idea was to iron this fusing stuff onto scraps of fabric --- and I do have quite a big bin of scrappy fabrics.  Then once the fusing stuff is nicely on the properly cut piece of fabric, I fuse it to the first and last pages of my brown paper note pads...

Now, I can feel slightly superior (we all need that even if we don't admit it out loud) that I am using this craft paper for a very useful purpose, and not only do my little booklets save buying dollar store note pads -- that maybe are not made from recycled paper -- but also they look pretty too, and make use of my fabric scraps all in one go...

So, my current project (really I can only make one of these books each day with the amount of brown paper, hubby brings back home from his newspaper bundles) gives me something to occupy myself, even if I don't feel like sewing or knitting or crocheting or walking the dog or even cleaning toilets!

Now, I can say I am saving the world -- just a little bit, anyway...