A British woman is turning old leather sofas into beautiful handbags as a way to save them from the landfill. Lisa Crick gets the couches donated to her for free, and then she recycles the good parts into handbags, totes, messenger bags, and luggage in the space of a week. She tries to use every part of the furniture she can, even giving away the cushion stuffing free to people to use as dog beds. The 53-year-old, who calls her business "New Baginnings", sells her totes on her website and in a pop-up store in Dilton Marsh, Wiltshire, England, for anywhere from ￡25 ($28.89) to ￡200 ($239.14) and says the sofa bags are flying off the shelves. Lisa got into sewing in 2018 when her husband asked what she was going to do with the waste material from old curtains they had replaced. She told him she would make luggage out of it, never dreaming that she could turn her sewing into a business. Today, Lisa can make up to 9 bags from a sofa and chair, and has also created other products — including a line of aprons — from hot air balloon fabric, carpeting, and old jeans. She estimates that she has saved 20 sofas from landfills over the past 16 months.
