The sustainable fabric directory
A resource for sustainable sewers. If you’d like to choose sustainable fabric in person, please ask us about our fabric range in-store.
“The Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), covers the processing, manufacturing, packaging, labelling, trading and distribution of textiles, ensuring that both environmental and social standards, such as safe and hygienic working conditions, no workplace discrimination and fair pay rates, are respected.“
Hannah McFarlane for Good On You
Fabric
The Organic Textile Company
A fantastic family-run shop that sells a huge range of sustainable and ethical fabrics, including different weights and colours of organic cottons, bamboo and some linens. Additionally, they sell blank products ready for dyeing along with haberdashery such as organic cotton thread.
Wild Orchard Fabric
A company that is passionate about ethical and sustainable home sewing. They sell only sustainable fabrics, making it easy to be informed as you choose your fabrics! They avoid polyester and have plastic-free packaging, too.
The Hemp Shop Fabrics
A supplier of hemp fabrics and hemp blends. Their fabrics come in natural colours but they also sell dyes. Hemp can now be bought in soft and versatile forms. Moreover, it is thermo-dynamic, has superior wicking and is stronger than cotton and linen.
Merchant and Mills
A place for stunning fabrics with style as the central ethos. They sell a range of organic cotton, linen, hemp and cellulosic fibres including Tencel. Moreover, they sell deadstock fabric and haberdashery along with kits and classes. Their website is easy to use since it groups all the sustainable fabrics together. There are also fabrics for a wide range of budgets, including some gorgeous fabrics for top-end budgets.
Fabric Godmother
A large range of cellulosic fabrics, e.g. Tencel, viscose, modal and cupro. Additionally, the fabric godmother specifically stock EcoVero viscose, too, which has higher environmental standards throughout their lifecycle than regular viscose as the fibres are derived from sustainable wood and pulp. They also sell organic cotton and other OEKO-TEX certified fabrics.
Sew Me Sunshine
They have a section on organic and OEKO-TEX certified fabrics, also another section for deadstock and ex-designer fabrics. Furthermore, they have a large range of cellulosic fabrics, including lyocell.
Ray-Stitch
They supply a variety of organic fabrics, bamboo silks and linens, including European linen.
Self-Made
A supplier of fabric with a dedicated organic section. They sell a wide range of printed and plain organic fabrics.
Empress Mills
A family-run shop stocking a range of organic cotton fabrics listed by type, including fleece, voile and jerseys along with plain and printed woven cottons.
Wild linens
An earth-conscious linen textile brand supplying OEKO-TEX certified European linen fabrics. Their consciously-sourced natural textiles place sustainability firmly at the heart of what they do. In curating fine quality linens that last, they support authentic European craftsmanship and give back 5% of their profits to support female survivors of human trafficking in Nepal. Wild linens hope to tread lightly on the Earth and those that call it home.
“Did you know that hemp fabric is the most environmentally friendly and sustainable of all-natural fabrics?”
The Hemp Shop fabrics
Haberdashery
James Tailoring
A family-run business whose aim is to create a responsible, ethical and sustainable choice in sewing products to makers. They sell a great range of certified organic and recycled products, including thread, elastic and fastenings.
ADKN
A sustainable fashion business that also supplies sewing materials. ADKN is an acronym for Animal-free Designs and Kindness for Nature. ADKN’s primary mission has always been to deliver premium-quality products, respecting very strict ethical and environmental standards. Under the ‘shop ADKN materials’, you have access to some organic and recycled fabrics, but most usefully recycled interlining, recycled thread and bamboo wadding.
Merchant and Mills
As well as their beautiful fabrics, (see above), Merchant and Mills also sell a variety of haberdashery including natural fastenings, recycled elastic and drawstring,
Tencel, the brand name for Lyocell, is an environmentally friendly fabric. It has an entirely transparent supply chain and the fibres come from renewable sources. It is made using non toxic solvents using a ‘closed loop production’ meaning 99.6% of the solvents are captured and recycled in biological recycling plants.”
The Fabric Godmother
Learning materials
The Wild Dyer: A guide to natural dyes & the art of patchwork & stitch
This book by Abigail Booth is a lovely journey into natural dyeing, with small guided projects. The book describes what plants you can use to dye fabric, including vegetable remnants from your kitchen and the different plants you can forage for throughout the seasons.
Fashion Revolution
This website provides an amazing amount of resources to empower yourself in the world of identifying sustainable fashion. Additionally, they call on brands to be responsible for the ethics and sustainability of their supply chain.