I'm looking for a means to get rid of my (now) useless primitive butchering table, and Google sent me straight to you! Unfortunately it looks like that functionality is still only planned at the moment, so definitely giving this a follow - I hate that I can't even put this thing out of the way in a chest, or even just throw it on the fire... I just want it gone! XD

I think for "quilting" the best way to do it would be to allow poor quality or tattered clothing to be cut up with shears into "fabric scraps" (better quality clothes could give you whole pieces of fabric). Then, if you put enough fabric scraps together, along with a piece or two of regular cloth, you can make a patchwork overcoat. (You could even have a down variation for even more warmth; add feathers to it.) I find the first winter in game to be hard because I never have enough decent clothes to wear. I usually find some clothes when I'm exploring, but they're all in poor condition and don't last the winter. If you could cut up found clothes (and your starter clothes), plus get a precious piece of cloth from some found or first-harvest of flax, then you could at least have a nice coat to wear that first winter.

Better Ruins is a good mod, but if you want to find things other than cracked vessels, you need to look for ruins underground (don't need a mod for that). The previous people built safe rooms underground and they have a lot of ruined junk in them, like broken beds, tables, shelves, plus the cracked vessels, crates, ruined boxes and chests, and metal bits and bobs. Those are the things that desperately need some recycling option.

Those are some great ideas LadyEdain! You are right, people are ingenious and definitely will find ways to repurpose what they need. Your husband sounds like he was a cool dude. I think altering loot tables for ruins would be pretty simple.  Would be good for me to explore. If I remember correctly, there already are a few small mods that do different things with ruins to make them more valuable though I am not certain how comprehensive they might be.  (I haven't found many ruins in my playthrough yet, mostly just cobblestone and the vases)

Clothes recycling is an interesting idea as well as quilting! That would be considerably more advanced, to make the quilts, but the idea intrigues me. Might be worth pursuing. My mother loves to quilt and that is a feature I've never seen captured in a game. Perhaps some sort of a fabric/sewing mod with focus on decor and repurposing. 

It's probably not coded for it in game, but I've always felt like the clutter objects from ruins should be recyclable. You ought to be able to bust a table up with an axe and get firewood. Or wood rubble and broken shelves ought to at least give you sticks. And there ought to be a way to melt down (or re-forge) metal barrels and pipes and things. At the very least you ought to be able to use a chisel to chip them into metal scrap. In real life, people recycle metal. My late husband blacksmithed and he made knifes from the spring steel from car suspensions and lead bullets from tire weights. He even made armor from old road construction signs. Rust isn't an issue (as long as it's not eat through); it will burn off in the forge fire and you can hammer out the pitting. In a survival scenario, people will absolutely be looting old metal stuff and making them into something else.

Clothes are another thing we need to be able to recycle. Even tattered clothing can be make into something new (irl, things like quilts). Maybe the clothes in the worst condition only give some twine, but stuff that's a bit better could give a bit of fabric. That way if your clothes are not good enough for winter, you can break them down and remake them into something that will work better. Or if you have something that's not useful to you, you could get some precious colored fabric from it to make something you would like more.