Creative couture

Old jewelry pieces and buttons, a place mat, an old belt: The trinkets you find during your spring cleaning could be just what you need to spruce up your wardrobe.

Fashion crafting is an easy way to take clothing you already love and give it a new look. It's good for the environment, good for your budget - and good for your favorite duds.

It's also big business: Fashion crafting accounts for more than $180 billion in sales of apparel and accessories in the U.S., according to the NPD Group, a leading global research firm.

At the winter Craft and Hobby Association convention in February, options ranged from simple to sublime: place mats folded in half and trimmed with felt became handbags, with an old belt used to make the strap. Embellishments such as beads and paints spruced up old jeans. There were dresses made of paper.

Terri Ouellette, known to crafting fans as "Terri O," explains that the benefits of fashion crafting - which she calls "Creative Couture" - include a measure of bragging rights: "When someone says ‘Hey! Where did you get that?' you can say, ‘I made it.'

"I look at things when I go to the department store and I say, ‘Wow those jeans are $250. Wow, I hope they fit well' because basically what you're paying for are the beads and baubles and the lace. And then I like to look at that and go: You know what, I can do that myself."

It's also popular among young fans of "indie crafting," and environmentalists who snap up earth-friendly materials like recycled felts and plastics, soy and cornbased biodegradable yarns, eco-friendly dyes and earthfriendly glitters derived from spices.

To Ouellette, that's not the only way crafters are "green."

"We never throw anything away. You see a true crafter's closet, you know that we were the original eco-friendly people!"

MAKING YOUR OWN FLAIR

This simple project from the Craft and Hobby Association can turn an old place mat into a functional and unusual bag. You can use any size or shape of place mat. Get creative and use an old belt, rope or chain to make different looks. Add trim to the top and bottom and use embellishments in the center for hundreds of looks.

MATERIALS:

Fabric place mat Trim Leather belt Fabric glue or sewing machine Utility knife Embroidery thread and needle

1) Fold the place mat in half with the side you want showing folded in. Stitch the sides together and turn right side back out.

2) Cut and glue trim along the top of the opening about 3/4 inch down from the top.

3) With a utility knife, cut two holes in the leather belt at each end. Attach the belt to the sides and the top of the place mat using the embroidery floss.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS