As a small business, we’re constantly looking for ways to reduce (and reimagine) our waste – our favourite solutions merge sustainability and creativity to create fun, practical solutions.
Climate anxiety is real. Thinking about climate change can feel overwhelming, especially when the problem seems too big for any of us as individuals to make an impact.
We’ve found the best antidote is action. So at the studio we do what we can to reduce our waste, and we’re discovering creative solutions along the way.
Some of our sustainability efforts are straightforward and a bit boring. Like installing 25 000 litres of rainwater harvesting tanks (JoJo tanks, for the South Africans reading). Practical? Yes. Exciting dinner party conversation? Not really.
But our favourite solutions are where creativity and sustainability collide – like finding beautiful ways to use up all our colourful scraps.
Our sustainable scrappy fabrics
As we explained in our last blog, at Cowgirlblues we do everything by hand. Skeining, dyeing, washing, winding, labelling, etc. This makes us painfully aware of our waste, which is exactly why we came up with our scrappy fabrics.
We take all the leftover pieces of yarn that can’t be sold – too short for a mini ball or yarn candy – and transform them into vibrant, joyful fabric. Zimasa stitches these scraps together, and suddenly what would have been landfill becomes cushions, chair upholstery, tags, and our beloved scrappy sling bags and project bags.
It’s colourful, unique, and a good reminder that waste is often just a failure of imagination.
Creative, sustainable community sourcing
At the start of this year, we made a set of tote bags as thank you gifts for our sample knitters. These incredible knitters make most of the samples you see at trade shows and in our store – a huge amount of work that deserves proper celebration.
Instead of buying new fabric for the lining, we reached out to local Cape Town clothing brands to see if they had offcuts we could use. Just Cruizin and Good Clothing (who both make amazing clothes) gave us some stunning leftovers.
The tote bags turned out beautifully – cream on the outside with pops of colour for the lining and pockets. Big enough for a sweater sized project, with pockets for all your needles and notions. Safe to say our sample knitters loved them.
From trash to toys
Another source of ‘waste’ at Cowgirlblues is the cones our yarn arrives on. They’re durable cylinders that stack together and come in all different colours.
In other words: the perfect toy.
We gather them up and send them to Early Childhood Development centres, where they become tools to learn counting, colours, and building.
Creative mending
We love visible mending. We’ve hosted many workshops over the years, and turn the imperfections in our hand-dyed shawls into features with visible mending.
We’re also proud to say that visible menders love us back – Hikaru Noguchi and Holly Kane both love our mini balls for mending projects. They offer amazing colour variety without committing to a full skein or ball.
Sustainability and creativity: The magic of constraints
Constraints are truly your best friend. They lead you to innovative solutions you wouldn’t have found otherwise.
When you don’t buy a new roll of fabric, you collaborate with your neighbours and make something even better. When you don’t toss away yarn scraps, you invent scrappy fabric and discover a whole new product line.
Sustainability is exactly that – a set of constraints. Use fewer resources, make them last, leave less waste. You’re forced to get creative to find solutions.
Climate change is still an enormous problem that we won’t solve with yarn cones and visible mending alone.
But at Cowgirlblues, we’re choosing action over anxiety. We’re finding joy in the process. Instead of viewing sustainability as a sacrifice, we see it as an invitation for play and experimentation.
That’s what it looks like from where we’re sitting, anyway. In our second-hand armchairs, surrounded by scrappy fabrics, dyeing yarn with Cape Town’s rainwater and scheming up the next creative solution to a problem we didn’t know we could solve.
