Is your sewing machine bored? #Cure with a visit to Fabscrap

We visited Fabscrap-Brooklyn during our New York City trip. It turned out to be a highlight of our trip, even for the non-sewers. We’re still enjoying making things from our purchases. Our dining room chairs have been recovered. Clothes were salvaged and transformed. And craft projects have been created. We can’t wait for our next visit. So if you’re interested in creating things with fabric or recycling or both, this post is for you.

A Little More About Fabscrap

In 2016, Jessica Shriber founded Fabscrap, a textile recycling nonprofit nestled in the depths of Brooklyn’s army terminal. Fabscrap’s mission is to keep as much unused material as possible form going in to our landfills. Before founding Fabscrap, Jessica worked at the New York City Department of Sanitation and was in charge of the city's clothing recycling program.

Approximately six percent of New York's waste is fabric because of all the fashion designers.

Now Fabscrap is working with some 500 brands around New York that are attempting to reduce textile waste. As a result, Fabscrap receives approximately 8,000 pounds of textile waste a week.

I found Fabscrap because of Trish from trish stitched. You can see her post here.

Fabscrap has a section called mendables, clothes that are castoffs or mockups that just need a little love and care.

At the time of our visit, mendables were $5 a pound and so were scraps. Zippers were $1 each. Leather and fur were individually priced.

Here’s a photo gallery of our visit to Fabscrap.

All of the waste arrives at Fabscrap in these trash bags.

Most of the fabric is sorted by color.

All of the scraps are also sorted by color.

Our Fabscrap Haul

This was our entire Fabscrap haul, purchased for roughly $140. You can see that we picked up quite a few mendables and scraps. I also grabbed some fur and leatherette, which you can see in the middle on the bottom. I got most of the scraps because I wanted to make a scrap map like this one from See Kate Sew. I will post about my map as soon as it is finished! I also picked up some buttons and zippers for various projects that I plan to do in the future.

Those who have other craft interests might like to know we have used the green ruffle in the upper left corner for holiday window decoration and the stretchy pink yarn just below it for wrapping presents. There were some massive rolls of yarn that would have made more fabulous decorations, but they were only sold by the entire roll, and we couldn’t carry it all the way back! Maybe we should have brought a rolling suitcase instead of backpacks.

My favorite items were some of these. (Ok fine, I loved all of the things I got.)

First things first, this dress is probably my favorite. I turned it into a skirt and have worn it so many times already