There are so many reasons I use organic fabrics in my business and in my home.
I have been sewing for over 30 years. My mother is from The Netherlands and she instilled in me a sense of style and the importance of good quality fabrics from an early age. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, but my Mom taught me that buying or making a few good quality pieces was better than buying a lot of “cheap” items that wouldn’t last. Just as a few great pieces in your wardrobe can make you look and feel like a million bucks, a few great pieces in your home can make your home look like the people who live there have style and grace.
So, at 18 years of age I had already been sewing for 6 years, and landed a job at a fabric and custom sewing store. The owner continued my education about the fantastic and superior qualities of natural fabrics like silk, cotton, linen and wool. I was hooked! I completed a Fashion Design program and later also completed an Interior Design Program. I continued to use natural fabrics and kept learning about the different qualities and characteristics of these fabrics.
Skip ahead a few years to 2005, and I read an article about conventional cotton and how many pesticides and herbicides were used to grow this “natural” crop. You can read more about this here. I was shocked and appalled. I started to look into alternatives for regular cotton and discovered organic cotton, hemp, bamboo, and organic silk and linen. My favorite fabrics just became even more important to use!
Here are some really good reasons to use organic fabrics:
- Conventional cotton and synthetic fabrics like polyester contain many toxic chemicals. It takes between 10% and 100% of the weight of the fabric in chemicals, to produce that fabric.
- Synthetic fabrics are highly flammable.
- Fabrics with stain resistant finishes contain perfluorochemicals and wrinkle resistant finishes use formaldehyde. A few brands you might recognize are Teflon, Scotchguard, Stainmaster, Crypton and Gore-Tex
- Skin is the largest organ of our body and can allow chemicals to be absorbed into our system.
- Risk of causing cancer:. The chemicals linked to cancers are all found in conventional textile processing.
- Sleeping: while you sleep, the chemical molecules found in bedding made from conventional cotton are being breathed in and then transferred to the blood from deep within the lungs.
- Breathing: many of the chemicals will rub off the fabrics into the air and on the floor, to be breathed in by babies and toddlers and adults.
I have shared this article with worthy goods textile, who are having an organic fabric giveaway contest. I would love to win some of their amazing fabric and I would put it to good use!
http://worthygoodstextile.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/surprise-organic-fabric-giveaway-contest/
