Sustainable weaving mill Enschede Textielstad and Soetekouw have joined forces to create ‘Surprise!’, a home and upholstery textile collection winning the 2019 Design District Best Product Award. By sharing knowledge and craftsmanship the colourful collection came to life. There’s more to it than meets the eye: all textiles in the collection are made from recycled materials.
“Ethics meet aesthetics: to us recycling is not only necessary to save the planet and its resources, but also something that can be fun to do! When we developed the collection we set ourselves the goal to make the collection as festive and colourful as possible. All of that by not using a single drop of dyestuff ; the colour in the textile comes from the recycled fibers in our yarns. This way we save thousands of litres of water and KG’s of CO2 for every kilogram of produced textile.”
Sustainable and durable The Surprise! collection is woven in the east of the Netherlands in Enschede Textielstad’s weaving mill. When Soetekouw decided to make the transition to even more sustainable designs, she approached the mill and the rest is history.
They only use yarns from European spinning mills, to guarantee their origin and limit our CO2 footprint. Textile waste, for instance discarded workwear or waste from garment manufacturing companies is shredded, carded and spun into yarn. With these yarns colourful, sustainable and durable textiles are woven, mainly used for upholstery. Fabrics for curtains are under development.
Our fabrics are produced on demand. That way we never have any unsold stock or other waste. Don’t worry; this doesn’t affect lead times: we can deliver within 3-4 weeks and can weave up to 10.000 meters a week if necessary.
