One lucky Hello Craft Member will win a free, custom skirt made from your own T-shirts, by our friends at the Sardine Clothing Company!

Sardine Clothing Company creates a line of sustainable apparel and accessories for men, women and children, grounded by the responsible concepts of Eco-friendly design. Using only re-purposed fabrics to manufacture its products, they generate little to no other environmental impacts commonly associated with the garment manufacturing process. And their products are pretty darn cute.

Wanna win?

• Current Members: You’re automatically entered (yay!)
• Not a member yet? Sign up for a Hello Craft membership before December 20th at 10pm for your chance to win

Being a Hello Craft Member demonstrates your commitment to independent craft, and helps us in our efforts to bring the crafting community together through education and participation. Check out all the benefits and sign up on our Members Page.

Contest ends December 20th at 10pm. The winner will be picked at random on December 21st. Questions? Email info [at] hellocraft.com.

Kunin, an eco felt supplier, lists their fabrics as being made of eco-fi (formerly ecospun). Here’s the condensed description of the recycling process, from eco-fi’s website:

Plastic PET containers are picked up at curbside and community recycling centers, and then sorted by type and color. They are stripped of their labels and caps, washed, and crushed, then chopped into flake. These tiny pieces are melted and extruded to create fiber. The fiber produced is crimped, cut, drawn and stretched into desired length for strength, then baled. The baled fiber can be processed into fabric for a variety of textile product end uses.

Eco-fi is, essentially, polyester fiber made from 100% recycled PET plastic bottles. Pretty cool, right? Their fibers go into more than just felt. Other fabrics, batting, even carpeting can all be manufactured from eco-fi. And it can be blended with other fibers to create a wider range of textures. The best part is that eco-fi fibers (so they say) are “chemically and functionally nearly identical to those made from non-recycled fiber.” They just come from bottles that might otherwise be in a landfill, instead of depleting natural resources (and using up a whole bunch of oil) to make new fibers.

Pretty nice. I have a whole new resepct for felt, in all its candy-colored wonder.

AWESOME eco-felt wall art from DashingEtc, bottle photo via wikimedia

I am a terrible knitter. I lack patience, so I wind up with a drawer full of half-finished projects. However, I am a bit of a closet yarn addict, which is probably one of the other reasons behind all those half-finished projects. I see a new yarn and I want to start something new. And let me tell you, the yarn from KnoxFarmFiber has me thinking that maybe I need to start something new…

This organic, cruelty-free yarn starts out as wool from the well-cared for sheep and their other woolly friends at Knox Farm State Park, and is then carded, hand-spun, and dyed yummy colors with environmentally-friendly dyes. I love that the skeins of yarn come labeled with a photo of the animal who “donated” her wool to the process.

From KnoxFarmFiber: …the sheep are well-fed, well- cared-for, have lots of pesticide-free pasture, are protected against predators, in good health with lots of friends…and then their wool is cleaned with eco-detergent, dried in the fresh air, carded the old fashioned way and dyed by hand with low-impact environmentally friendly dyes, spun by hand, and labeled with a photo of the sheep who donated it…