Fair Trade batik fabrics, direct from India.

I work part time in a fabric shop, on the days when I'm not busily sewing away in my Shed.

We had a delivery on Wednesday, of a dozen of the most gorgeous batik fabrics.

Imagine my delight to discover that not only are they gorgeous, they're also Fair Trade!

You can see all twelve designs in their own Flickr set. I've also updated the organic & Fair Trade fabrics page on Design By Claire.

All of the designs will be subject to availability - they're extremely popular, and some of them will probably sell out pretty quickly. One of our regular customers asked us to out by five metres of each design for her, before she'd even seen them!

Just as exciting is the news that some of our silk dupions are fairly traded as well - I'm just waiting for an email from the Warehouse to confirm exactly which ones. Hopefully, if we can manage to convince the company owners of the rising demand for both organic and fairly traded fabrics, I'll be able to show you even more examples in the future!

The Bishopston fabrics are here!

The fabrics that I ordered from Bishopston Trading back in October have now arrived!

The enormous parcel was delivered on Friday, but I needed a bit of help to lift and unwrap it, so I had to wait a full twenty-four hours before I could look inside...

Aren't they beautiful?

You can see all of the fabrics in more details in their own Flickr set, here.

I had ordered 130 metres of fabric altogether! It came in nine pieces, each a different colour. Some of these were pre-ordered by friends who also like to make their own clothes, so I now have just less than eighty metres left, in seven different colours.

I've also ordered some new patterns to work with. As soon as they arrive, I'll be making a couple of outfits for myself, and then adding four new garments to the shop.

I'm really excited about all of this lovely fabric! All of the colours go together so beautifully, and it feels so soft and luxurious. I can't wait to make into clothes.

Doing My Homework.

Last week I received an email from Kirsty, who's studying Fashion and Textile Technology. She asked whether I would mind answering some questions about using recycled textiles, for a project that she's doing.

Here are her questions, and my answers...

1. Where do you source your fabrics from?

For recycled fabrics I usually go to Ebay, and to my local charity shops. I look for any large piece of fabric with a nice print, that I could imagine being worn as clothing.


2. What kind of fabrics do you use?

I use cottons and poly-cotton blends, almost exclusively. Usually I buy these in the form of bedlinen, such as sheets and duvet covers. Sometimes I will choose old curtains, if I think that the fabric can be washed, and will stand up well to being worn as an item of clothing.


3. What methods do you use to:
a. clean

I always wash any used fabrics before I start to work with them. I do this by simply washing them in my own washing machine. Whoever buys the resulting garments is probably going to wash them in this way, so I need to know that the fabric can survive, and isn't going to fray, shrink or fade.

b. prepare

Once the fabric is clean and dry, I inspect it thoroughly for any worn parts, and any holes or marks. Sometimes small holes can be mended, or covered with embroidery or other decorative work. Any dirty marks which can't be removed must be worked around. I don't use any area of the fabric which I feel is too distressed to stand up to being worn as clothing.

c. plan

Usually the type of fabric and the print will dictate what sort of item it will be reconstructed into. A small print, for example, could be used for a skirt or a top. A larger print might be better for a bag, or the back of a jacket. Plain fabrics can make more subtle garments, or be used as linings.

d. construct your designs ?

Everything I make is designed, cut out and sewn together by hand. I make everything myself, nothing is outsourced. I use new sewing threads, zips and other fasteners, as I then feel that I can guarantee that the garment will last a long time.


4. Why have you chosen to use recycled fabrics over new fabrics?

I have chosen to use recycled fabrics because I think it is a resource which is often overlooked. The textile industry is enormous, and we are being encouraged as consumers to buy cheap garments, change our trends every few months, and to treat fashion as something transient. As a result there is a great deal of waste fabric generated, which can easily be used in different ways.

I do use some new fabrics, but I am trying very hard to buy responsibly, and to only buy new fabrics which are organically produced or fairly traded – preferably both.


5. What has the public reaction been and how commercially viable do you think recycled production is?

The public reaction so far (from my personal experience) has been somewhat confused!
An enormous number of people don't see the point of spending money on a recycled garment, which they perceive as "used", when they could go down to their local high street shops and pick up something brand new for a very low price. So much of modern fashion is cheap and disposable that It seems difficult for people to understand that recycled garments can be of good quality, and long-lasting. Even if the original fabric used to be something else, what could be more luxurious than having a garment hand-made especially for you?

I think that recycled production can only ever be commercially viable on a small scale. To produce recycled garments industrially, there would need to be an enormously large availability of recycled fabrics. The raw materials would still have to be collected, cleaned, inspected and deconstructed before any new production could begin. These processes can be very time consuming and labour-intensive, and so it becomes more commercially viable to produce your fabrics from scratch. This is why I believe that it is very important to encourage the textile industry to manufacture in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner.

Having said that, there are ways in which technology and recycling can work together to create new fabrics. Polar fleece, for example, is made by recycling plastic drinking bottles. New cotton yarns can also be made from industrial waste such as fabric offcuts and used clothing, and then woven into new fabrics. Worn out cotton fabric is often recycled into paper products. With a bit of lateral thinking, I believe that a lot more could be made from products which are currently treated as waste. The success of this approach from an environmental point of view will at least partly depend on whether the energy required to recycle a product is going to be greater than that consumed by making it from raw materials.

Maybe I should think about adding something like this to the website. I found it really interesting to be forced to think about why I've made some of my decisions regarding my fabric choices, and explaining things to someone else really helped to clarify things in my own mind.

Lies and Statistics...

...well, okay, just statistics.

Today I have redesigned the front page of the Design By Claire website.

Ten days ago I signed up for Google Analytics, so that I could track what kind of activity was happening on my website. It turns out that a fairly large percentage of people were turning up to the home page, seeing the Queen of Hearts dress (Photograph © S L Hodkinson), and going away again.

Given that the Queen of Hearts dress isn't really representative of the work I'm doing these days, I thought that was a very clear indication that it was time for a change!

One thing which is also clear - I'm going to have to publicise the website to a much larger number of people, if I'm ever going to make any sales through the new shop. Most of the people who go to the shop page do click through and look at a number of items while they're there, but nobody's actually bought anything yet.

Next year I want to try and change the balance of my work - taking on fewer custom sewing commissions, and concentrating primarily on the duvet cover skirts and on the Fair Trade cotton, when it arrives from Bishopston Trading. In order for that to happen, I need to be encouraging people to buy directly from the shop, so I'll be selling quite a few more ready-made pieces in the New Year.

I'm currently being inspired by Gudrun Sjoden. I was looking through some of her old printed catalogues the other day, and I particularly like the way that the collections are designed to be mixed and matched and layered together. If I can design some garments which work in that kind of way, and make them from the Bishopston cottons, I'll be very pleased.

T-shirts and Tidying.

Today I have been mostly listing an assortment of Organic, Fair Trade and Sweatshop Free t-shirts in my Ebay Shop. They're all on auction for a week, ending on the 19th.

There are a variety of styles, colours and sizes for men, women and kids. I hope you like them!


As well as trying to make a bit of space by listing t-shirts, I have also been trying to make a bit of space by throwing things out. I am amazed at how much junk I've managed to accumulate in the Shed in just over a year!

I needed to give the place a really good clean. Aside from the regular dust-bunnies you inevitably grow when you're working with fabric and thread, the place was full of feathers from my Hallowe'en costume, and I was getting to the stage where I had to move eighty-seven things to probably not find the one thing that I was looking for. Those of you who've seen my house will know that tidiness does not come naturally to me (I can hear my Mum laughing from here!), but the Shed is now a shining example of organisation, and I promise to try very hard to keep it that way.

The last thing I want to do is to sort out my buttons - something of a mammoth task! I've inherited half a dozen sewing and button tins from friends and family this year, and I've consolidated all of the contents - needles in one tobacco tin, pins in another, one box for trimmings, one for thread. The buttons are currently in a huge Tupperware container designed to hold a cake, and it's full to the brim! A few weeks ago I bought a "Really Useful" set of sixteen tiny boxes in a handy case, so I'm going to divide the buttons by colour and keep them in these little clear boxes, so I can see them all. I have a big tin left over, for all the black ones.

I'm really pleased with how the Shed looks now, so hopefully I'll be able to work more efficiently in my newly-organised room!