mattress protectors and spice bags!

Bear with me, this does have an allotment connection!

Do you know that weird fabric that's often used to cover duvets instead of cotton. Well ... we had a double mattress protector with this stuff all round the sides. Predictably, it tore ..    ....and anyway, we now have a king size bed so the cover was no use. What to do     First of all use second old cover, and some old sheeting, to make new larger protector. Voila ...   

The fabric stuff from the sides .. well, that was bagged up and labelled 'shoddy' for my favourite charity shop  ... until I started making chutney the other week.  Well, it was out of that bag, washed and tucked in the drawer before you could say Jack Robinson, and now I have a not quite endless supply of stuff to make bags for the pickling spice ... and have even used larger pieces to strain crab apples for the juice.

How thrifty is that! 

Val suggests the tights trick in her book.

I had to get something to make chutney with yesterday.  I ended up buying those muslin squares from the baby section of the supermarket.  Cut one into smaller pieces but it frayed badly, didn't want cotton fibres in the chutney, so ended up using a complete one - rather big but did the trick!