A garland made of cotton reels and beads

The perfect decoration for a sewing room or sewing space. A garland made from old cotton reels or spools.

Today I’m joining the Sustainable Pinterest Challenge once again. The challenge is all about taking a look through your Pinterest boards to find an idea you like, then giving it a go, actually making it happen, and all with a sustainable twist. This month the theme is UPCYCLED so anything upcycled goes! Hang about at the end of this tutorial to see all the other upcycling ideas from the other creative bloggers who participate in the Sustainable Pinterest Challenge.

Months ago a friend gave me a box of fabric and bits and pieces asking “can you do anything with this lot?” In the box was a tub with these dusty, fluff covered cotton reels. They are very cheap thin cotton sewing thread that breaks very easily.

I confess that I am a bit of a sewing thread snob! I use a good quality thread for all my sewing, usually Gutermanns or Coats. I find good thread gives me much less trouble with my sewing machine so quite frankly there was no way i was letting this cheap quality thread anywhere near my machine!

Knowing I was never going to sew with this thread I put them to one side for an upcycling project.

I was inspired to make a garland by this pin and this pin.

How to make a garland from old cotton reels

All I used was the box of cheap cotton reels/spools, some beads from my bead box and a length of black embroidery thread.

Sealing the thread on the spool

Most of this cotton had never been used so I didn’t have to do anything to stop them unravelling. A couple had been started though so I sealed the end with a tiny dab of pva glue.

Threading the garland

Then it was a simple case of threading the reels onto the embroidery thread adding beads between each one. I needed to use quite big beads next to each cotton reel as the hole in the middle of these reels was pretty big (cheap thread remember!!) and I tried to pick colours that tied in with the cotton colours I had too.

Creating a hanging loop at each end

To secure each end and form a loop for hanging, I doubled the thread back on itself, back through the last bead and then tied a knot each side of the bead.

That’s it! Simple as that!

Cheap and not really fit for purpose cotton spools turned into a sweet garland to decorate your craft space. My sewing space looks cuter and my sewing machine is safe from this poor quality thread!

Garlands are so tricky to photograph nicely, they are so long and thin!!

A garland made from cotton reels surrounded by sewing accessories

Other ways to use old thread spools

Other ideas for old unusable cotton reels/spools include: Christmas tree ornaments, name place table settings or a sweet button bouquet.

Now let’s take a look at the Pinterest inspired Upcycling ideas that my fellow creative bloggers have come up with this month for the Sustainable Pinterest Challenge: