Stuff about stuffing

As Winnie is showing in the above photo, that's more or less how much rags goes into each rag pet, in addition to a big lump of cotton batting. It's about one single bed sized sheet or half of a regular sized duvet cover, ripped to shreds. The older and more worn the sheets the better, I prefer the ones that are so worn you can almost see through them! They're so lovely and soft and they make the best stuffing. I get a lot of my old bedclothes from family and if I'm running short, I nip to the flea market for more. If the sheets have a very cool pattern, I save a bit to use for rag pet clothes.

I do most all of the ripping on the balcony, since it makes a lot of dust and doing it indoors just means more dusting and vacuuming afterwards. I'd love to have some machine that'd do the ripping for me, since it's pretty tedious work to tear a big sheet to shreds and I'm pretty sure my lungs disagree with all that dust too. We did try using a paper shredder, but since fabric isn't as stiff as paper, it didn't quite work. I've also tried to find "shoddy" (shredded recycled fabric) online, but the smallest lot I've managed to find was 5 tons, and while it'd be super to have that much stuffing at hand, I'm afraid we don't have anywhere to store it! If anyone should know of a place that sells shoddy in small lots, I'd love to hear of it.

Comments

[Holly]

Wow, a single bed sheet amount of rags? I didn't realise quite so much went into a rag pet!

You could perhaps try op shops / thrift stores for more sheets? I know mine has sheets down here for about $4 for a flat sheet.

[Kitty Vane]

Yup, the rags are stuffed in pretty tightly, so it does take a lot of them to fill up one rag pet (who are about 45 cm from their ears to their toes by the way).

I do frequent op shops and thrift stores along with flea markets. The only problem with buying old sheets is that they tend to be in too good a condition. The better shape a sheet is in, the harder/stiffer the resulting rags will be, so I prefer to get the holy, worn through stuff that's soft and easier to get a smooth result with.

[V.]

I was wondering if you can somehow pin the fabric to paper to get it in the paper shredder... But then I realized that would be a lot of wasted paper... U_u

[Kitty Vane]

V, I thought about attaching the fabric to/sandwiching it between paper, but like you said, it'd be a huge waste of paper and I'm guessing that picking the fabric from the paper wouldn't be fun either (paper cuts!)... and that's only if it would work.

[diem]

have you tried cutting using pinking shears and then washing/drying? I've found that produces a ragged edge much like ripping does.

[Kitty Vane]

Diem, the issue isn't with getting ragged edges, but in shredding the sheets into small strips so they're easier to stuff/mold into the plushies. Hence my search for a handy shredding method. :)