Luxury, but make it Sustainable

We create unique pillow covers from upcycled upholstery remnants. We source nearly all of our fabric from the remnant table at our locally owned upholstery fabric store, but every now and then we’ll find useable high-quality remnants at Goodwill.

There are several reasons we’ve chosen to rely on these bits of leftover fabric in our business. Perhaps most important to us is to prevent, or at least delay, these textiles from reaching the landfill. Textile waste is a growing environmental problem, not just because of the sheer volume of discarded clothing and fabric, but also because these materials may contain toxins. With an increasing reliance on synthetics and polyesters, textile waste often sheds microplastics into groundwater, while even natural fibers may be treated with chemical finishes that can harm the earth. Diverting upholstery off-cuts from the landfill by creatively reusing them is a crucial component of our business plan, but relying on these materials has additional advantages. Shopping the remnant table gives us access to many fabrics not available, or not affordable, at retail. The remnants we buy are priced reasonably, a small fraction of the original retail or “to the trade” price, and are free of tariffs, which in turn keeps our prices lower than they might otherwise be. Finally, working with these smaller pieces, often a yard or less, offers a unique combination of variety and limitation which spurs our creativity and imagination.

The lengths of designer fabric we are able to source dictate what we can do. Some of our pillow covers group two or more small pieces of fabric on the front, with a harmonizing print or neutral weave on the back. With larger remnants we are able to sew a limited run of three to eight pillow covers in the same fabric without piecing. This often gives us the opportunity to create pillow covers with different but beautifully coordinating fabric on both sides, giving you the choice of which side is the front and which is the back.

And it doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes we’ve got sufficient fabric to cover both sides of a run of covers. We only do this when the fabric’s design allows us to book-match the seams so the pattern flows from front to back.

Because of our sourcing strategy, sometimes an individual cut of fabric will wait in our workshop for quite some time until we find an equally great piece to pair it with. When we are combining two or more textiles, we consider what will emerge when they are brought together by observing the interplay of colors, patterns, fibers, and textures.

Finally, you might wonder what we do with the scraps from our production. Whenever possible we cut the fabric to minimize scraps, but some leftovers are unavoidable. We use these small off-cuts in many projects in our own home, to make the occasional gift, or to stuff a pillow or pouffe. We don’t just throw them out.

To read more about how to make a pillow cover, click here

To read more about the specific techniques we use, click here

To shop our clearance section, click here