As a quilter and textile artist I have been moving toward using recycled, repurposed and sustainable fabrics in my work, so any source that offers those catches my interest immediately. That's how I discovered Fabscrap, a non-profit service that collects waste and unwanted textiles in New York and Philadelphia, mostly from the fashion industry, and recycles them by giving them away to students, artists, local designers, and crafters for reuse. All they charge is a small serve fee to cover their operating expenses.
Fortunately they also offer for sale online to the public yardage, scrap packs, yarns, trims etc. at very low prices (what is basically the service fee and shipping.) I decided to invest in a multi cotton scrap pack ($4.00) and see what I'd get. Oh, boy, was I surprised.
All of the fabrics I received are in this pic and the ones that follow. There are many swatch book squares, but also some decent size cuts. The fabrics range from flannels and linens to shirtings and wovens.
Every piece was clean, and most were pressed and edged by pinking shears. A few had some wrinkles and some thread bits, but all are in new condition.
If I had to guess I'd estimate I got about three yards of fabric total. It's the variety I think is so cool and inspiring. I tend to draw my inspiration from my materials, so the fabric is giving me all kinds of ideas.
The fact that I'm helping to keep these lovely textiles out of a landfill also makes me very happy.
Here's everything all together. It's a generous amount of 100% usable fabric.
Some of the swatch-size pieces do still have some sticky tape or bits of label fragments on them, as you see here with the flannel at the top. That's easy enough for me to remove. Also, two of the fabrics in my box probably came from finished garments, as you can tell from this olive piece at the bottom.
This other piece is double-layered, so it might be a trimmed-off pant leg. :)
If you like scraps and surprises, you simply can't beat Fabscrap. I made another order to see what the color-specific packs would be like, and I can't wait for it to arrive. When it does I'll post pics on the blog.
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