My fabric story

When I first moved to Bristol in 2010 and was very lucky to land myself a job in a high end bespoke sofa and curtain making company. I was so excited as I've always had huge love of fabric (along with all the trimmings and yarns) and to 'play' with these expensive pieces while learning how to make hand stitched curtains and Roman blinds was just wonderful.

 It wasn't very long before I realised how much waste the company made and was saddened to discover that quite a large quantity of unused fabric was going in the bin and off to landfill. The curtain side of the business had the smallest amount of waste with only small pieces thrown away (essentially a curtain or blind was just a big square) but the sofa and upholstery side created masses of waste. The fabric would come off the roll, have all the component pieces cut from it and anything that was too small to make a scatter cushion from was classed as scrap and thrown away. On a plain fabric this may only be a small quantity but if the fabric was patterned and the seat cushions needed to match the back cushions and the sofa base there could be huge amounts of waste created. I started to save small amounts under my work table as I just couldn't let it be thrown away, some of this fabric was so beautiful and I'm my head I could see it sat in with all the other waste at the landfill site. 

One day the company van came back from the shop full of swatch books. They unloaded it into the dispatch area (the bin outside was completely full) telling us they were to be thrown away once the bin had been emptied. I decided I'd have a little look through them in my lunch break and was utterly stunned. These books were full of amazing fabrics and in every colour you could imagine, I was totally sucked in and was late back from my break. Apologising I was told that these swatch books were regularly thrown away as once some of the colours had been discontinued and new ones added these books were completely obsolete. 

I asked if I could take them home instead of them being thrown away saying 'it'll cost you less if you don't fill the bin so quickly'. The answer was yes and with no idea what I was going to do with them I filled my car up and took them home quickly before anyone could change their minds. I also asked if it was ok to take some of the other waste home too, again stating that it would cost them less in bin emptying if it was in my house instead. 

What was I going to do with all this fabric? I had absolutely no idea, I'd never had so much but all in really small amounts and much of it very thick as upholstery fabric needs to be hard wearing. I started with a patchwork throw for the bed and went on to make five pairs of patchwork curtains but it didn't really make a huge dent in what I had so they sat in piles all over the house waiting for me to make a decision.

A few years later I had decided to start making things to sell again. My partner worked away and I was spending far too much time on my own so I decided that if I made things to sell at handmade events I'd not only would I meet some new people but keep myself busy too. I had been on a mosaic making day many years previously and was still making presents for family and friends so I thought this would be a good place to start. I booked an event to be my first and made several mosaics, laid out my table at home but found there was a lot of empty space. I'd seen an idea in a book about using man made fabric cut in ever decreasing circles and you could burn the edges to create rose like flowers. I made a handful from some of the sample books added a brooch clasp and filled in the spaces on my sparse table. To my delight they were the most popular item I sold so I made more for the next event and again they sold really well. Now my problem was I didn't have very much of this fabric to keep making flowers from and I needed to design something using the thicker upholstery fabric. I tentatively made a generic bird shape from upholstery velvet with lace round its neck and a silk wing as brooches. They were popular too and customers started to ask for other animals and more specific birds. All of a sudden I had ideas for most of this wonderful fabric I'd been saving and the more I made the more ideas kept coming.

In 2019 I made the leap to become totally self employed, this was wonderful, I could take my old employers waste and turn it into something useful again. Unfortunately the company then decided after six months not to let me take their waste anymore, instead they would rather send it back to landfill. My big worry now was where would I get a new supply, there can't be that many companies with fabric waste can there? How wrong was I. As I traded at more events and told everyone in ear shot that everything I made was with fabric destined for landfill so other companies started to offer me their waste too. Sometimes it was just a carrier bag, sometimes it was massive big bags and boxes, each time something different. With each new type of fabric came lots of new ideas and now my problem wasn't would I have enough it was where am I going to put it all!

So the big question is how much upholstery and curtain fabric goes to landfill every year? I have no idea, we all know that there is an eye watering large amount of clothing waste thrown away, from the unsold 'out of season' items to the 'only worn once' and the 'I don't want it anymore' but I firmly believe very few people even consider the sofa and curtains as fabric waste. Every single interior design shop will have these swatch books and every single sofa and pair of curtains made from them will have waste which quite often will end up in landfill because there is more fabric than they know what to do with. Some interior designers would probably only be too glad to give away the swatch books instead of throwing away and some will sell them once obsolete. I know there are a growing number of people making all sorts of wonderful things from waste fabric so the big question is how do we get this waste upholstery and curtain fabric out of the bin and into the hands of creative hands? We all need to produce less waste and making something beautiful from something deemed rubbish is one brilliant way of helping do that.