The earrings featured in the sample sale are all made from offcuts from the cap-making process. Part of my determination to find a purpose for every bit of material purchased. Instead of sending it to landfill or sitting unused in a box.
Don't get me wrong, I would never send fabric to landfill anyway, never understood how people do! To me landfill is the absolute last resort for any kind of waste. There is always something we can think of.
When cutting pattern pieces out of fabric for sewing, they are always tesselated as much as possible to fit together and get as many out of the fabric as possible but there are always tiny bits left over. For example in the pic below, the two peak pieces (the white ones) need to be cut on the bias of the fabric (diagonal) and the blue pieces (which are sides of caps) fit in pretty snuggly.
But there's still lots of little gaps of, well lovely material in beaut colours, that is getting wasted. These little bits are what the earrings are made from. The pieces of fabric in between the pattern pieces.
I collect boxes of the offcuts as a I go along making up the cap orders each week and the piles of fabric often make for pretty satisfying pics, especially when they are layered up from using the electric rotary cutter, or just laid out all together.
The offcuts are sorted in coloured piles, and anything that is large enough to still use as a pattern piece is obviously kept for future orders, but the tiny little pieces that get saved are used for earrings.
I totally understand that earrings are not caps, so to some it's a little odd to sell them! But to me I'm just trying to brainstorm waste and make something else useful out of what could have been thrown away and try to make the business as responsible as possible. The inner grunge teenager in me used to do a lot of jewellery making too, so it brings back a lot of bead shop memories!
So if you buy a pair of earrings at the capalog then you are helping to save some textiles from becoming waste!
The earrings are ONLY made from fabric that has come from pattern-cutting offcuts (and the findings and eyelets obvs.)