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Upcycling, recycling, crafting and repurposing: Doilies. Many of us have a lot of doilies, inherited from family members, bought in a moment of madness, or collected over the years. Or even ones we’ve made. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what to do, especially when they’re fairly small, or no longer fit in our decor. We’ve been collecting ideas across the web, of fun crafty and easy ways to use these, infuse new life in doilies, create wonderful gifts. Many of these projects are easy enough to do with the kids, perfect for Summer

Of course we offer hundreds of doilies, runners, centerpieces, lace and more in our store… either ready for use, or ready for you to recycle.

1. Lace Votives or bowls

From Martha Stewart’s website

While this project is not strictly intended for doilies, since it calls for rectangular lace, we thought it was a great idea to adapt to a doily. You could take the doily, and do exactly what the instructions suggest but with a doily, and get a similar effect. You can also dye the doilies to get different shades and create an assortment. Using different shades of pink or green for example, or going with a color theme.

The instructions can be found by clicking on the Martha Stewart link above.

2. Table Runner

From the Blog Desire to Inspire

This fun runner can be done in so many different ways. You can start with all similar color doilies or with a mish mash like the authors did – see here:

The instructions could not be simpler, and you can do anything as far as pattern, colors, shape etc goes. It would be a fun outdoor project with vats of color dyes.

Here are different looks using the same idea:

3. Pillows and/or Lavender Sachets

This is perhaps the simplest idea of them all. Just stitch a doily onto a plain pillow, with a tone on tone effect, or a contrast. Do the same with a small lavender sachet (make one out of 2 squares stitched together with an opening, stuffed with lavender and then stitched shut. You can stitch the doily to one of the squares beforehand).

Great and easy gift, or a way to turn a boring store bought pillow into something unique, personal and definitely one of a kind!

Sachets

Pillows

Pillow from Cafe Cartolina

This Shop on Etsy makes some wonderful pieces

4. A more elaborate pillow

We posted this idea a few months ago, courtesy of the Smile and Wave blog and we’re still smitten with it!

A bit more involved, but still easy, and the result is just stunning!

The tutorial is very, very well written and easy to follow.

5. Doily snowflakes.

This idea is one we’ve used in the past. We dipped doilies in fabric stiffener and used them as ornaments, simply by threading a ribbon through the top. This idea can be taken even further as shown here in the blog Linaloo

Keep reading to the bottom, she actually made a bowl (see #1 idea).

6. Doily Jars

Fun and unusual – turn ordinary glass jars into fun lights, or containers, or anything. Just glue the doily (on the inside or on the outside – the outside is of course where it goes if using it as a luminary).