We are recording today on the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish and Kwa Kwa Kwa Kiwak peoples,

including Slalo Tooth, Squamish, Musqueam, and Kolmox First Nations.

Hello and welcome to Love to Sew! I'm Caroline, the owner of Blackbird Fabric,

and I'm Helen, the designer behind Helen's Closet Patterns.

We're two sewing buds who love to sew our own clothes and want to encourage you on your sewing journey, too.

Join us for today's topic, Zero Waste Sewing!

Hello, Helen! Hi, Caroline! How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks. How are you?

I am very good as well. We have such an exciting topic today. There's so much ground to cover,

but let's start off by just defining Zero Waste Sewing for anyone out there who doesn't know what

Zero Waste Sewing is all about. So, Zero Waste Sewing is the process of creating a garment or

garments without any or with very little waste. So, for those working in the fashion industry,

it could be designing a sewing pattern or changing a wasteful garment production process

at the factory level. For a home sewage, it could be about creating habits that reduce or eliminate

waste sewing from Zero Waste patterns or designing your own Zero Waste garments.

Yes, and Zero Waste Sewing has gained traction in the 21st century, as more attention has been

called to the amount of waste that the fashion industry generates. About 15% of the total fabric

used by the industry is wasted. And that might not seem like a lot, but when you consider that

400 billion meters of fabric or manufactured per year, it really adds up that 60 billion meters

a year. Wow. Yeah. Of waste. It's pretty wild. And home sewage have started to pay attention

to the amount of waste they generate, too. For example, our former assistant Melania has started

a textile waste reduction project on her blog. We'll link that in the show notes.

On her first post for the project, she sits on a big pile of the year's worth of scraps. It's

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