Recycled Sari silk

After reading about all the discussion about recycled sari yarn, and trying to search for the yarn in India with no success, I finally decided to get adventurous and unearthed one of my old printed silk sarees which had disintegrated to a point where I could no longer think of wearing it.
This is the sari before I attacked it with scissors

I cut it up into 1.5" strips...and tried to crochet using different size hooks. I finally settled on a "I" hook as the most comfortable to use with the silk fabric strips.
I followed a very basic pattern, for a doily centre and ended it with scallops formed by 5 dc in st, sk next st, sc in next stitch.
This is the result of my experiments
I was expecting a soft, luxurious product, but the final result is a thick hot-pad. Now whoever heard of silk hotpads! the limit of luxurious living!

I barely used up 20% of my sari..so have a lot of fabric to play with, not to speak of the dozen or more silk saris languishing in a box.

Would love to hear your comments on this experiment..what do you all crochet-savvy people think of the end result? Is it worthwhile to painstakingly cut up the rest of the sari? Seeing the thickness of the final crocheted item, what else can i try to make with this?