Seamstress makes rugs from recycled denim

    Sarah Lillie was raised a resourceful girl and has become a resourceful woman. Lillie has taken up the hobby of fashioning rugs and aprons from old denim jeans. The hobby started a few years ago and for a while was confined to making wares for her family. Earlier this year, Lillie began selling her homespun creations at the Farmers Market in Washington.

    Lillie lives in the country between Washington and Wayland with her husband Roger, daughter Jacque and son Craig. The inspiration for her new-found hobby came a couple of years ago when she was staring at a pile of jeans that ?couldn?t go to Goodwill but were not so far gone that they were useless.?

    Lillie searched the World Wide Web for ideas about what to do with old jeans. She saw that some people cut the leg off a pair of pants, sewed the hole shut and used it to hold things like plastic grocery bags.

    ?I wanted to do something more than that ? something more useful,? said Lillie.

    The first thing Lillie did with that pile of jeans was to cut it up and make wristbands out of it. Then, she decided to do an even more ambitious project, which was to craft a rug from the jeans. The first few rugs she made were for the bathroom. 

    ?I kept getting compliments on the rugs, and I thought, ?Maybe I?m on to something,?? said Lillie. ?Someone would come over and ask ?Did you make that rug?? Anyone who knows me knows, ?yes, she made it.??

    Lillie makes the rugs by cutting up three to four pairs of jeans to use as the backing. She cuts up between 5-8 pairs of jeans into 2-inch by 3-inch rectangles, which she does using a cardboard template. Only the zipper and the waistband remain after Lillie has carved up the pants.

    She then sews the rectangles together, and gather them up as she sews in order that they stick up from the backing and provide a soft, cushioned surface. Each step of the process takes a couple of hours, she said.

For the full story, see the Aug. 7 edition of The Washington Evening Journal