Fall is officially here! It’s cool and blustery, and we’ve got cozy fabrics on our minds. What better way to welcome in the lovely changing leaves and chilly weather than with some beautiful recycled felt? Feltwerker, a Chicago fiber artist, offers beautiful recycled wool felt scraps that you can incorporate into your Fall and winter projects!
We are obsessed with food-based fibers around here! From banana yarn to pineapple cloth, I’m starting to wonder if we’re feeling more hungry than crafty.
Of course, when Kelly hipped me to coir, a natural fiber made from coconut, I couldn’t pass it up!
We’ve talked about the awesomeness of crafting with fabric scraps before, but not everyone has a shamefully stuffed scrap bin like the one in my craft room. If you’re not a hoarder of fabric scraps but still want to get your craft on, don’t fret! Etsy seller Scrap Ecochic has you covered!
We’re on a funky fibers kick around here, it seems! From pineapple yarn to spider silk, we’ve been exploring some unusual natural fabric options. I sent my post about pineapple fabric to a friend a couple of weeks ago, and she pointed me to yet another interesting natural fabric: banana fibers.
[Female Golden Orb Spider. Creative Commons photo via quintanaroo]
Kelly pointed me to these awesome wedding dresses made from pineapple cloth, and my interest was piqued!
It turns out that pineapple fabric, or Piña cloth, is a traditional fiber from the Phillipines dating back from the 1800’s! So here’s the skinny on Piña.
Roisin Fagan lives in London and her partner Arounna Khounnoraj is from Toronto. The pair met when they were neighbors at a craft show in Toronto almost three years ago, and they hit it off immediately. After running into each other at several other Toronto shows over the years, where folks kept asking them if they sold their fabrics, they decided to do just that and to do it together!
We talked last year about the pros and cons of bamboo. Like hemp, growing bamboo is easier on the environment than conventional fibers such as cotton. Bamboo is technically a weed, which means it grows fast and requires no pesticides and very little water.
One downside to bamboo comes during the production process. Since the plant itself isn’t fibrous, it’s mashed down into sort of a chemical slurry and then pressed into fabric. The process is similar to making rayon. It’s toxic for workers, and it strips the bamboo of its beneficial antimicrobial properties.
There’s also the trouble that comes with anything that gets popular. Despite its speedy growth, there is still a threat of overharvesting bamboo. According to the U.N., around 600 varieties of bamboo are extinct or threatened.
Wait…that doesn’t sound fab at all! Well, Greenyarn, a new Boston-based company, has a new approach to producing bamboo fabric that’s worth a look!
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