Green Options

Plover Organic is primarily a bedding company, but they sell some of their fabrics by the yard.  Are they green, you ask?  Well, just check out their credentials:

All organic fibers used by Plover are certified according to the standards of the Organic Trade Association (OTA) in the United States, and by those of IFOAM and SKAL internationally.

Plover’s method of dyeing conforms fully to the American Organic Fiber Processing Standards (AOFPS) recognized by the OTA, as well as the Oeko-Tex 100 Standard and that of the Environmental Technology Advancement Directorate (ETAD) recognized in Europe.

Plover Organic’s linens are certified by Oeko-Tex and by GOTS.

Though no certification is mentioned for fair trade, they also support and say they practice fair trade principles.

So I’ve been doing the Fabulous Fabrics series for a while, and I’ve been noticing something.

HarmonyArt Organic Design, Amenity, Oliveira Textiles, Mod Green Pod, Rubie Green, Kirin & Co, Thea and Sami - all of the designers behind these wonderful fabrics are women. (Right?  Someone correct me if I’m wrong.)

Michael Miller Organics stands out as the lone male name with an organic fabric line.

Can someone educate me a little here?  Is it typical that most mainstream fabric is designed by women?  I don’t know enough about the industry, honestly. I know that in quilting, men like Kaffe Fassett, Michael James, and Ricky Tims stand out not just because they’re good at what they do, but because they’re guys in an industry dominated by women. (Side note: am I the only person who really, really wants to pronouce Kaffe Fassett’s name as “coffee faucet?”) 

GreenFibres is a UK based online “eco goods and garments” shop which sells a number of hemp, linen, silk, and organic cotton fabrics by the yard.  Their cottons and linens are certified organic, and two of their fabrics are certified fair trade - others “are made under fair and safe working conditions.”  The fabrics they offer are the usual natural, unbleached fabrics with a couple of colorgrown patterns thrown in.

They offer two items that really caught my attention, though, because I hadn’t seen them anywhere else: organic cotton gauze, and organic cotton / nettle blend fabric.

The first is organic cotton gauze, a.k.a. netting.  They say that it’s great for gardening, with an almost throwaway comment that it’s “great as a craft material or dressing up prop!” Indeed, I’ve always associated gauze with doctoring more than with sewing, but since they’re selling it in the fabric section instead of bath and body, I thought I’d figure out what crafters could use it for.

As sustainable fabrics go, bamboo certainly has buzz on its side.  I’ll admit to having fallen under its spell, though I ended up fairly unhappy with the durability of the socks and sheets I purchased while trying to avoid non-organic cotton.

Living here in Austin, I can attest that under the right conditions, bamboo doesn’t need the care (read: water) that even organic cotton does in order to thrive.  There are yards all over the city where bamboo planted as a privacy screen has busted out all over.  It’s like kudzu, only taller.

So the idea of using bamboo for fabric is extremely appealing.  Plant it, ignore it, harvest it, fabricize it. It’s that last part that’s a problem.  How exactly is thick, reedy bamboo turned into soft, fuzzy fabric anyway?

So there I was, looking through the HempTraders website.  Ah yes, I said to myself, they have all kinds of hemp and hemp blends.  Hemp knits, hemp stretch fabrics, hemp linen and muslin, hemp canvas, and even hemp / silk blends and satins.  They have hemp upholstery fabric too.

Some of the fabrics are as low as $7.25 per yard, some as high as $20, and as I’ve come to expect with hemp, I’m seeing mostly solid colors.  HempTraders has a wider variety of fabrics all in one place than some of the other online shops I’ve covered, and the photographs of the fabrics are exceedingly clear.

“But what’s a specialty weave?” I thought, and clicked on that link.

Now I am obsessed with the idea of sewing up little boy pajamas.

What is going on down under, folks?  There are some rockin’ fabric makers in Australia,

Pippijoe is another great source for limited edition, hand screen printed fabrics.  They print on both a 55% hemp / 45% cotton blend and a 100% hemp fabric using environmentally friendly inks. The fabrics are described as “soft to touch and feel like linen” and perfect for “crafts, bags, clothing, soft furnishings and light upholstery” and a heavier base weight fabric is available for projects that need something sturdier.

Pippijoe’s Etsy Shop offers mix packs and a couple of the fabrics, or you can buy fabrics by the metre on the main Pippijoe site.  Different fabrics have different prices, from about $16 to $35 per yard in U.S. dollars for 30″ wide fabric.

GreenSage bills itself as a store for “sustainable building and furnishing.”  As part of that identity, they sell a number of natural, organic, and hemp fabrics - including the 100% hemp print you see here, which unfortunately for the hobby crafter is $50 per yard.

Several times I’ve thought about whether to include a fabric this expensive in the Fabulous Fabrics series?  Is it just to taunt you?  No!  You’re all very nice, and I like you.  I’m also not trying to reinforce the perception that all organic fabric is expensive.  The fact is, fine fabrics and upholstery fabrics are expensive no matter what they’re made of, and we all understand that.

What I am trying to do is celebrate the organic, sustainable, and environmentally friendly fabrics that people are creating, even if most of us aren’t able to consume vast quantities of it.  I think it’s part of building and nurturing a movement to point out successes and hold up even high end examples of what we want products to be like.

And I like to show you pretty things.  You’re o.k. with that, right?

Spoonflower is a new company that offers crafters a chance to order fabric printed with their very own designs. Crafty superstars like The Black Apple and My Paper Crane have already jumped on this cool service, and I love drooling over their amazing designs.

The thing that bums me out is that they aren’t currently offering a sustainable fabric At the moment, they have one fabric option: 100% Kona® cotton from Robert Kaufman Fabrics. It looks like that might change! They are taking votes right now on a second fabric, and an organic option is included in the mix! You can cast your vote on Spoonflower’s next fabric option by commenting on the post right here!

Don’t forget!  The next Carnival of Green Crafts is Thursday at Whip Up.  Sneak your entry in just under the deadline now!

I started writing the Fabulous Fabrics series here in March, and I thought the six month mark would be a good time for a retrospective.

What I’ve liked best about doing this series is seeing the combination of creativity and passion that goes into what these fabric designers and manufacturers do.  If someone’s making organic fabric, it’s because they believe in it.  It’s not just because a market analysis told them they would make some money.  (In fact, I sometimes worry if they’re even making enough to live on, given the extra work they’re doing to source and use eco-friendly materials and fair trade practices.)  These folks really want to make a difference.

So here are the fabrics and shops I’ve covered so far in the Fabulous Fabrics series here on Crafting A Green World.  At one point I was afraid I would run out, but more and more come to my attention all the time.  So here’s the past, and I’ll see you next Tuesday to start in on the next six months!

Like Amenity, Mod Green Pod, and Oliveira Textiles, the fun new fabrics from Rubie Green are high end decorator fabrics with a high end price tag: about $90 per yard.

But oh, the lovely!

Pictured above are Megan, Patsy, and Portobello.  Rubie Green’s full line of fabrics includes two stripes, a zigzag, a funky zebra stripe print, a kind of lattice looking print, and a floral.  The zebra stripe and the zigzag come in two colorways each, and Patsy also comes in green, for a total of 12 fabrics.

What makes these fabrics green?  Well, here’s the rundown from their website:

Last night I got an email from the HarmonyArt Organic Design mailing list, and WHOA MAMA! Here are two of the four new fabrics they’re releasing, called Garden and Space Cowboy.  Space Cowboy also comes in a red and green colorway.  The final fabric is Fields of Honey.  I’d been looking forward to that last one for quite a while.

All fabrics are 110″ wide organic cotton sateen that’s fair trade certified. Individual yards of all of these prints can be bought directly from Organic Cotton Plus, or Garden and Fields of Honey can be bought directly from our favorite online shop NearSea Naturals.  It’s $20-30 per yard, but take into account the 110″ width when you’re comparing the price to regular 45″ wide fabric.

The email also announced three new colors of 110″ wide cotton sateen solids: scarlet, chocolate brown, and moonless black, and 60″ wide white organic cotton sateen.