How to Upcycle Synthetic Clothing Into Pillows

Remember when I wrote about synthetic clothing fibers getting into our oceans? Since then, more articles have been penned and published on the subject. From science journals to bloggers, the unease has grown.

Knowing the plastic fibers of polyester, nylon, and acrylic, even with my infrequent washing, were travelling down the drain and going into the ocean left me feeling irksome. I addressed this in the blog post last year hoping to kinda get over it. But I have been unable to shake it. Slowly, I have been collecting all my synthetic clothing into a pile in the closet, preferring to wear items of my wardrobe made of cotton and flax.

I had no intentions of donating my unwanted plastic clothing to a local charity store. I’d just be dumping a problem I had on to someone else. Eventually, ALL the synthetic shirts, dresses, and skirts from my wardrobe were pulled from my wardrobe. Except underwear … it is near impossible to get underwear without some form of elastic.
I decided to take inspiration from Sustainability in Style and turn used clothing into stuffing. Hers were for an upcycled fabric bolster, mine was to fill pillows.

Unlike Sustainability in Style, I did not cut mine into strips, rather keeping them as is. They were still wearable clothes after all. It reminded me of backpacking trips and camping holidays, where I stuffed my clothes into a T-shirt, for use as a makeshift pillow.  My synthetic clothes filled three pillow cases.

The pillow casing was made from used hessian, now sitting on an old church pew at the entrance to our house. If you came into our home, you’d have no idea that the pillows are stuffed with old clothes.

All image source: Rogue Ginger

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