Green Options

Who is king on stinging nettle fabric? Well, Brennels claims to be the only company in the Netherlands to grow stinging nettles on a large scale. Driving forces are sustainability, fabric and fashion.

What’s new is the digestion process to produce lighter and more delicate nettle fibers to spin into fine yarns. The company has around 70 hectares of agricultural farmland in the north of the country dedicated to production with three years of extensive research under their belt.

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.

The setting is the foothills of the Himalayas. Giant Nettle, a/k/a Allo in Nepal, is a plant that grows wild, – up to three meters (or 9.84 feet) in forests. Like hemp, the plants don’t require fertilizers or pesticides. Also like hemp, the plants prevent soil erosion. In fact hemp grows well in this region too.