Sustainable Fabric Shopping at a Trade Show | Sewing with Better Materials

Good morning and welcome to Portland. Today I am at the functional fabric fair and it is day zero. It is the conference for talking about the future of performance fabrics and fabrics in general and how the industry is trying to become more sustainable and I am all for that. So I'm going to take you guys along with me and hopefully we can get some good information about the future of fabric. All right, so I just finished

the day zero sustainability conference at the functional fabric fair and I just got back to the room and let's talk about what I learned today, what I found the information that I found super valuable. So they started off talking about regulations, laws coming out in Europe and the EU that will hopefully trickle over to the United States. And one of the biggest things that I found interesting and they didn't focus on it was

there's this law that takes effect in July that is going to ban companies from destroying products. And I'll put up — [clears throat] — more information about it so that you can see the slide, but this really is interesting to me. And so these regulations for the EU are for all companies that ship or sell products in the EU. So this will affect a lot of American companies and therefore I'm excited about it because those companies will then in turn you know, have to put those things in practice within their company in order to sell in Europe. So if they cannot destroy products, then will that for us who are thrifters, upcyclers, will that in turn cause companies to more directly have to donate those products directly to their stores or will they in turn have buyback programs, do more, focus more on circularity? So that they're taking the products back and doing something else with them. I wonder how they're going to solve those issues. Are they then going to think about the actual number of products that they're putting out so that they're not pumping out as many products. I'm really curious about that. And then in this whole case, will some companies just stop selling in Europe? I'm really wondering how that is going to affect the world market of apparel and textiles. And then what they did focus on was labeling and how garments are going to be labeled. And this is really exciting because garments are going to have like a QR code that tracks everything about that garment all the way from you know, how the raw fabric was developed all the way through to the our actual garment being made all the information. Now we don't know exactly at this point because this one won't go into effect super soon. I think it's maybe the end of 2026 or in 2027. So we're not exactly sure all that go is going to go into that, but that one is really exciting because it'll put more information in the hands of the end consumer. It'll help the brands as well, but it'll put more information into the end consumer so that we are able to make decisions that resonate with us and I'm super excited about that. And when we make decisions that resonate with us, that in turn tells the brands what we want and it can affect the way that they do things because if we stop buying it, they can't make it or sell it. We had a whole activity around circularity and that really, you know, resonated with me because I'm really in my brand, you know, trying to focus not only in my brand as a whole, not only in Blueprint Signature, the garments, but my brand as a whole trying to make sure that everything is circular because there's a lot of waste that can go into upcycling as well. We all know that. One of the people that I talked to that I really enjoyed speaking with was one of the people from the brand JanSport. She was in charge of their sustainability over there. Every time I come to this thing, I'm really excited to find out which brands are sending their people to these things because that lets me know that brand is trying because, you know, sustainability is a spectrum and you go from where you are and you work towards, you know, a higher level of sustainability. And so I want to know what brands are putting in the effort and I did not know that JanSport as a brand was putting in that level of

effort. I will be going to the fair, the showroom to see all of the amazing fabrics, talk to the actual suppliers of these fabrics. This is raw fabric and a lot of because this is performance fabrics and so these are going to be outdoor fabrics, the fabrics that you use for your yoga pants, your running your scuba diving, you know, things like that. And so there's a lot of polyester and not a whole heck of a lot of wool and cotton, but they do have some of those things, but talking about how to make those performance fabrics that are definitely needed in this world, how to make them more sustainable. So can you give me an

overview of what AATCC does? We develop standards for testing. So is it testing textiles? Okay. So I cover management, UV. Nice. So this is for all type of textiles, not just textiles for garments, but all types of textiles. Of course testing is a big part of sustainability because if we have testing standards, then nobody can get out of it. — We're not we don't do the physical testing physically. We create So you make the standards. We test, we create Well, I think that's even more important. Volunteers throughout industry. Oh wow. Committees and Okay.

Nice. So how is Teflon knitting the future? We start with the yarn and basically our garments are fully mostly focused on seamless Okay. So if it's knitted seamless, that means there's very little like left over cuz you're knitting the whole garment in one. There's about 40% less wastage than like traditional cottons. So it also lasts longer because there's not the seams falling apart, etc. Yeah, that's true. Okay. And what about the knit itself? Like the material it itself, how are how is that going towards the future as far as like sustainability and everything like that? So traditionally within seamless, too, it's usually synthetic yarns and we do a lot still of nylons and polyesters. We are moving more into natural fibers within activewear. We're pushing that forward. Okay. We're cottons and wools and bamboo. Okay. Just like some of that you can see there. Okay. So some of these are like bamboo and Yeah, exactly. So this for example is bamboo. Oh nice. Okay. There's some wool here. So we're really trying to bring in the more natural fibers and we also work a lot with recycled nylons. Okay. Specifically we did this whole I don't have it with me, but I have this really cool swimwear collection I did that's all bio-based nylon that's derived from fishing nets. Oh nice. So we're repurposing that and really trying to explore that way. So it's yeah, there's less wastage, it lasts longer and then really trying to push like more natural fibers with the Nice. So what can you tell me about the fabric that makes up these amazing bras that allows women to not have underwire? — Oh yeah. Yes. That's what I'm talking about. These are the collection of the floor. Okay. The floor means that the sheer featherlight fabrics engineered with our best technology. So all these like a bonding bra top, underwears, we do lots of bonding. Okay. Yeah. So silicone, PUR, whatever the bonding techniques that we have.

Let's go to the innovation zone. I'm looking for the future. Yeah. Wait a minute. Bacterial melanin. Okay. — [clears throat] — Microbially produced melanin as a bio-based material for UV. Okay. Interesting. Longan's artificially produced. Seaweed fiber. Yes, collect the seaweeds. 3D printed fabric. I want to touch it. I need to touch it. It's This is 3D printed leather. 3D printed lace. 3D printed materials for shoes. I think that is amazing. Silk dye with wow silk dye with Okay. Cotton. Also, this is a dye. I got to touch it. Oh, that feels so good. I mean, it's silk, so of course it feels good. Silk. Laser assisted textile coloration. Okay, patterns put on with lasers. I actually wonder if I could do this. Mhm. I need to test this with my laser at home. All right. Now, you guys know we're very focused on this. What does this say? New blue. A waterless You guys are going to love that. Digital colorization platform for denim that integrates color and finishing in a single post weave process. So, I'm assuming they would start out like this. Actually, it's silk. And then you would do all the coloring of the denim afterwards. This was my husband's

shirt. He no longer wears it, so I took it and cut the bottom off, created a ruffle, removed the you know, pointy collar and Yeah. — Doesn't she look amazing, guys? And this is the cotton booth, which of course one of our favorite things to upcycle. So, thank you so much.

— Nice to see you. Hi. How are you doing? I'm good. How are you guys? — Good. So, what's going on over here? So, we're World USA. We are an apparel and textile manufacturer. So, what we're showcasing here at our manufacturing booth is our sock knitting technology. — Ooh. So, our embroidery and print on embroidery process. Nice. And here we're just showcasing just standard embroidery, which is very like you'll find this kind of machine embroidery in any kind of like large-scale production embroidery process. But, what makes us unique is you can see here a before and after where we're embroidering with just white thread, and then we're using a specialized printing process to add color to it. — Oh, wow. — where you're able to get the detail and texture of embroidery, but with that color depth that only screen printing alone can get. So, you get this super unique garment where you get like that cool texture of the bee with like the wing and such that you wouldn't be able to get with just embroidery alone. Wow.

I had a blast touching all of the fabrics. Y'all know I am very tactile. I love I love like this chair is giving me life. I love different textures of fabrics and materials in general, wood, you know, just anything tactile. I really love it. Then the patterns, textures, colors was absolutely amazing. Talking to the textile brands to see where their heads are at as far as sustainability. Some of them are cutting edge. kind of, you know, I feel like lagging behind a bit. Um They have a place where they have expert talks, so people are talking about from their brands or their expertise what's coming up. And she was saying the same things about the legislation. So, that The legislation has been the big thing for this conference. And uh somebody was saying in my comments, and I'm really hoping that this does affect the United States as well. So, after this I am going to go to happy hour and meet some other content creators, and then I think they have a after party after this. And I'm going to enjoy myself, and then it's back to Houston. Yes, I am going back to Houston. I still live in Houston. I will still be doing sewing classes. Um do not worry. I know a lot of you guys were worried. Some of you guys thought I up and got married. was leaving the state. But, no. Um I did not do that. I moved offices, and I will talk more about that very soon.