Healthy Fabrics

Handmade Hemp Ornaments

Do you remember making paper snowflakes when you were a kid? Use the same fold & cut technique to make these eco-cloth ornaments. Cut snowflakes from white linen fabric backed with fusible web. Fuse and hand stitch your one-of-a-kind designs to 3" hemp rounds, front and back. Insert a piece of boiled wool sweater or wool batting to give ornaments a bit of dimension. Blanket stitch outer edge and add a loop using hemp twine or wool embroidery floss. Happy Holidays!

Hemp: A Healthy Home Fabric

If I had to choose my favorite fabric I'd have to say it's hemp of any classic weave: canvas, summercloth, linen, twill and herringbone. New or vintage. Natural colors or dyed. I love them all.

Hemp's inherent beauty is only part of my attraction. This amazing bast fiber boasts a long list of impressive qualities: extremely strong and durable, more absorbent than cotton, insulative and compost pile worthy.

Best of all, when hemp fabric is produced according to sustainable methods --from field to fiber to finished goods -- less water is required than other natural fiber production and little to no chemicals are used. Now that's a healthy home fabric!

The only down side of hemp fabric is it's still grown and produced off-shore. Read why Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the California Industrial Hemp Farming Act.

Hemp Canvas Fabric

One of my favorite hemp fabrics is the versatile 11 or 12 oz. semi-bleached canvas. It’s the ideal weight and texture for so many home décor applications: pillows, cushion covers, upholstery and shades. Hemp canvas is durable; wear and tear softens the hand over time but the fiber remains strong. The milky natural color has a subtle yellow cast, like pale butter. It's one of those goes-with-everything neutrals. No dyes are used to achieve it, just hydrogen peroxide. And, here’s a tidbit that might surprise you: the color deepens slowly with age and sunlight exposure resembling a tea stain. Get it at Hemp Traders.

Natural Fiber Shower Curtains

I’m a huge fan of cloth shower curtains. The cotton canvas and hemp linen curtains I use do a great job at stopping water from spraying outside the shower. They work like a wick, channeling water downwards through the cloth into the tub. And, the best part: no chemical off-gassing. 

Replacing a vinyl shower curtain with a natural fiber alternative is one of many simple steps you can take towards improving your home’s indoor air quality. Why? A shower curtain made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) off-gasses toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The vinyl material contains the chemical additive DEHP, a phthalate that is a suspected carcinogen. Yuck, who needs that! 

There are plenty of fabric shower curtain options like GreenHome’s Organic Cotton Shower Curtain or GreenFeet’s Natural Cotton Shower Curtain. Both are made in the USA and priced under $50.

And for you DIY’ers, look for a 7 to 10 oz. natural or organic cotton canvas, either un-dyed or bleached white using hydrogen peroxide, at your local fabric retailer or online at Fabric.com. A semi-bleached Hemp Summercloth also makes an excellent shower curtain, which can be found at Hemp Traders.  

Do you use a cloth shower curtain? What’s your favorite: cotton or hemp?

Hemp Quilt

 
A quilt made from hemp? Yes! And, it’s soft, cozy and warm just as you’d expect any quilt to be. This one is a simple, scrappy patchwork design made mostly from hemp summercloth, hemp canvas, hemp muslin, hemp herringbone; classic weaves of subtle textures and natural hues that showcase the beauty of this amazing bast fiber. Pieces of color grown organic cotton chambray and herringbone, and vintage linen twill are interspersed to add color depth and additional surface interest.

Read on to find out why hemp makes the best healthy home quilt, which batting to use in a hemp quilt and tips for “tinting” hemp fabric with coffee or tea to create a rich palette of naturals for your patchworks.

Oliveira Textiles Printed Hemp

If you love sewing and decorating with hemp but want to add a pop of color to your neutral palette of creamy naturals and earthy taupes consider these bast beauties: sea-inspired hemp prints designed by Dawn Oliveira of Oliveira Textiles.

Printed without heavy-metal pigments or chemical finishes on soft, beefy twill and herringbone made of hemp and hemp/organic cotton, Oliveira's fabrics lend themselves to a variety of healthy home décor applications. Dawn's contemporary prints are rendered with graceful lines and pretty hues taken straight from her native seaside landscape. It's a design aesthetic that's comfortable, happy, and well-suited for making colorful accent pillows, cushions, curtain panels and casual slipcovers for chairs and ottomans.

One of my favorite things about well-designed eco-prints like these: as little as one yard will make a big impact (on your living space and the environment). Dawn is offering her prints at a special reduced price of $55/yd (regular price $75/yd) from June 13th-20th.

Oliveira Textiles is a Rhode Island based design studio focused on producing environmentally considerate fabrics that combine Dawn’s 30+ years of textile design experience with certified production partners. Fabrics can be purchased through their studio. Email info@oliveiratextiles.com or phone 401-396-9194.

 

Biodegradable Hemp Fabric

Hemp fabric really does biodegrade. Just over a year ago I added about 3 cups of undyed hemp canvas scraps to my compost bin (see my post Composting Hemp Fabric). Today I removed the entire year's worth of compost, ready to fertilize my garden, and found no trace of the bast fiber. Tip for composting hemp fabric: cut into small pieces no bigger than 1" x 3" and add to your bin when dry matter is needed.

Elegant Custom Eco-Furnishings

If you’re a green interior designer you know the value of offering your clients custom made eco-furnishings. But put hemp in the hands of an inexperienced maker and you’ll end up with a mess instead of a masterpiece. Finding an expert custom furnishings service versed in sustainable textiles can be challenging. So when I come across an outstanding resource I like to spread the word. Meet Kathleen Redmond, owner of Magnolia Lane Soft Home Furnishings, Inc. located in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 

Hemp History Week 2011

Exciting news from the HIA: "The Hemp Industries Association is proud to announce Hemp History Week 2011, a week-long celebration of the benefits of hemp health and sustainability, May 2nd-8th. Hemp History Week is a national grassroots education campaign designed to renew strong support for hemp farming in the U.S." Read more about this important event and find out how you can get involved at the Hemp Industries Association .

 

 

Hemp Corduroy: Tips for Making Curtains & Covers

 
When you think of corduroy it might conjure up images of grandpa’s trousers, a child’s romper or elbow patches on an old tweed blazer. More than likely it’s not one of your trendy favorites for interiors, right? Well, here’s an eco-corduroy I hope will give you an entirely new appreciation for the plush stuff and inspire you to make your own curtains, pillows and cushion covers.