I don’t know if this counts as recycle/upcycle, I've always called it re-purposing, but here is something I do.
I go to a lot of yard sales, I'll buy cross stitch kits. (If I remember right the most I've paid for one is 50 cents) It doesn’t matter if I like the design or not. I take the kit apart, put the canvas with that stash and the thread in my thread box. If it's printed I just use the reverse side.
I always have the canvas when I find a design that I want to make (I don’t do a whole lot of counted cross stitch and I don’t remember the last time I bought the canvas at a store) and I'm re-purposing something that was going to be thrown out anyway.
And here's something I stitched with that.
