HOW WE MAKE #1

Through a series of ‘How We Make’ stories, we want to share with you some of the fabrics we are using at the moment, both where they are from and how we use them.

Here at Francli we are always looking to find the most sustainable design routes and because of this, up-cycling has become an important part of our making. Pre or post consumer waste, we want to give it a longer lifespan through our products. Whether it’s rummaging through festival waste or being approached with a manufacturing waste problem, we are always coming across really interesting materials that create unexpected design opportunities.

Hypalon off-cuts:

Through a chance meeting followed by an interesting conversation, we discovered a unique material that is shipped off in the skip load to land-fill every fortnight. Hypalon is the fabric used to construct boating inflatables; it is UV resistant, waterproof, air tight and all-together pretty indestructible – and definitely not bio-degradable. As the pieces used to build these boats and ribs are pretty large, off-cuts to them are huge pieces of fabric to us! We collected these ‘scraps’ because it’s durable and protective characteristics are exactly what we look for when we’re designing for rough environments. 

Leather off-cuts:

The leather we use is given to us in a range of size, shape and colour and arrives at the studio stuffed into a big jute sack. These off-cuts are the waste product of up-holstering classic cars, they are not big enough for the patterns of their interiors but they still have potential for other uses. Leather has long been used in traditional craft because of it’s strength and flexibility, we love it’s timelessness – how it slowly moulds to the shapes and movement of it’s application and collects marks of age like proud badges. 

See how we’ve been using both Hypalon and leather for our butchery apron project with 7th Rise: HERE

If you have any suggestions or ideas about up-cycling, please let us know! We are always looking for new materials we can incorporate into our designs, send us a message HERE