In an effort to live more frugally, I have found myself looking more and more for ideas of how to reuse or re-purpose items already in my possession in an effort to minimize the expense of purchasing new items. One of these items are flat bed sheets. In the US, with every sheet set you buy comes a fitted sheet, a flat sheet and two pillow cases. The fitted sheet and the pillow cases are what I'm looking for, the flat sheet is an item that wanders straight to the bottom of my linen closet, rarely to be seen again.
When we first moved to Connecticut, I wanted curtains for our new apartment. The first set I made with store bought fabric (on sale), which even after the sales discount cost too much to justify outfitting an entire apartment of windows.
My next attempt involved using some of those flat bedsheets, which while clearly not as nice as those made with store bought curtain fabric, still do the job of making my apartment look like a home. And I have yet to have a friend comment on them in relation to bed sheets or general oddness, etc. (I like to think this is not just out of kindness to me...)
On recent forays though the internet, and my continued quest for finding things to do with my remaining flat sheets (still quite a few remaining as we also inherited a bunch from family), I found out that you can sew fitted sheets out of flat sheets! And while I have yet to try this (it requires some space and dedicated time, which I am hoping to find within the next month or so), I am very excited and see no reason for this not to work. I am also very excited to increase my currently dwindling stash of fitted sheets (mostly due to old age deterioration).
I have no foolproof set of directions yet, but an internet search will yield many how-to guides, and I hope my success will warrant a follow-up post with results!
Do you have other things you use flat sheets for, if you're like me and don’t like them for the beds they were intended for? Or are there other items in your house you have found a new purpose for? Another excess in my apartment at the moment are old socks...
1 comment:
They look really great.
I also have a bunch of extra sheets that I didn't really think about until you wrote this post. Actually, this idea of repurposing existing fabric in the household (thanks to Leah) has really inspired me to learn how to sew. I was never that excited about sewing because it seemed like I could buy better, cheaper clothing at the store (*cough*made in China *cough*). But the idea of reusing stuff we already have is very inspiring.
I've also been pondering our extra towels (weird sizes) and such, because we received so many towels when we married. Sorry, that's unrelated.
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