I have put chopped up old t shirts (ones to bad off for recycling) into my compost bin, and they do turn into soil. I only use the all cotton ones.

You will need to completely wash out all the sizing from the fabric. My DGM used to mark her vegetable garden rows with strips of fabric (feed sacks) & eventually it would endup in the dirt. It seemed to disintagrate into the soil pretty good.

Hmmm, I don't think I would use the fabric in the compost pile because of the dyes.
One must be careful of the threads should they become entangled in teh birds' legs or around the beak in some freak occurance. That said, I have used threads for the birds.

As far as the newspaper, I planted our two raised beds last summer after building them, planted, covered with newspaper in several layers, topped that with straw pulled away from base of plants, and pulled maybe three weeds all season. This year we have built three more beds and I will use the same method.

I haven't heard about the gardening but I love to put out different colored thread scraps and small pieces of colored fabric in the spring and then find it all again in the birds' nests. I have also put hair from my hairbrush and it makes me happy that I could help them with their homes for the little ones to come.

I don't know about putting scraps of fabric in the soil, but I save all my small scraps and my thread clippings and put them out for the birds to build nests with.

I would think that over first. When you use news papers in your garden to keep weeds down, you are told only to use paper with black ink.

No I have never put the scrapes in the garden , but I do throw dryer lint out for the birds, I will start saving in a old coffee can to give to the birds, and GH, Thank you for posting this !!!! can't wait to see a small quilt in the trees!!!!