Waste Not, Want Not

    

 

Since I am a reclamation engineer/recycle artist, the challenge has always been to use all of the materials in a unique fashion. In the case of neckties, that meant finding uses for the lining that was not used in the shirts, the main part of the tie and the labels. I collect labels in all the clothing I recycle.

 

I found many inventive ways to use leftover necktie materials. Out of the necktie lining, I have made flowers for hats, both children’s and adults. Necktie linings have wonderful textures and a variety of whites and ivory. The assorted colors and patterns for the neckties work for the blossoms.

 

Tie ends also make great flowers—along the lines of daisies. The smaller ones will adorn hats and the ties with larger ends which I think are 70’s wide ties become large outdoor garden sculptures which I plant outside my studio in the summer.

 

The outdoor sculptures utilize discarded plastic tubing from champagne bottle baskets for the flower part and the center of the flower is stuffed with thread and sweater scraps saved precisely for stuffing flower sculptures.

 

Nothing goes in the trash. One of my primary goals as a reclamation engineer/recycle artist is to transform everything part of everything I use—ties, shirts, sweaters, buttons—into something useful and beautiful.

 

Not even the smallest necktie scraps go to waste as they can always be used for embellishment. I have a faux Persian lamb coat that has the smallest of my tie scraps attached with a bead to the collar of the coat. The coat was designed to look a certain way color wise when the collar is down and a different way when the collar is up.

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