Fabric bags made from scraps of wood

Do you know how the clothing production chain works? If not, and you're really curious, you can read more about it via the link here.

Or, you can just skip that part and keep reading anyway!

To produce our clothing, we need fabric. We have a few fabric qualities that we really like and continuously use in production. One of them is Kumashen, a 100% cotton fabric available in several colors. This fabric is used in many of our designs and needs to be durable, free from defects, and in the correct shade.

A fabric that’s too thin might not withstand the type of wear and tear we’ve designed our garments for. A shade that’s too green could lead to disappointed customers when their jacket doesn’t perfectly match their pants. That’s why this fabric requires thorough quality control, unlike our woven stretch fabric, which is more stable, used separately, and forgiving in shades of black, charcoal, or deep black.

When we order the cotton fabric, the factory sends us sample meters of each color for approval. This way, we avoid having to travel for approvals, and any defects or inconsistencies can be caught early and corrected before full production.

As a result, we’ve accumulated a collection of fabric samples in our studio, mainly used for reference and record-keeping. But then, we had an idea! We invited two students from @recycledesign_eskilstuna—Anna and Johannes, who were studying Re:design —to help us turn these fabric pieces into something meaningful.

Over the course of a few days, we created a mini production chain. We designed patterns, arranged fabric layouts for cutting, calculated material usage, cut the fabric, sewed everything together, and finally inspected the finished products.

By the end, we had built up a proper stack of fabric tote bags!

To satisfy our creative minds—and just for fun—we held a little photoshoot, pieced together some images on the computer, printed them on plastic, and created a stencil. We then used it to screen print our own designs onto the tote bags.

It was a super fun and educational process, and if we may say so ourselves—they turned out pretty great! Hopefully, this gives the leftover fabric pieces a much more exciting and meaningful second life, rather than just sitting on a shelf collecting dust!