Vintage Textiles Rescued by Fabric Treasure Trove

Article Added: 21/01/2009
HotHive Textiles has just discovered a fabulous internet treasure trove selling a range of recycled vintage textiles, embellishments and haberdashery items for designers and crafters. The company, Rag Rescue, www.ragrescue.co.uk “salvages scraps of fabrics and embellishments from the past and brings them into the future, clean and fresh ready to start a new life in the 21st Century”, with the aim of reducing the estimated one million tonnes of textiles that go into UK landfills each year.

Sandie Kerensky, owner and founder of Rag Rescue, tells me that she has always had a love of textiles and past fashions, which was her inspiration behind Rag Rescue and its sister website Oddities Antiques www.odditiesantiques.com, which is devoted to selling antiques that have been placed in drawers and attics many years ago but now take centre stage once again. The online shop contains an ever-changing array of antiques, collectables and handmade items.

Sandie says, “In 1996 I stumbled on a trunk of old deteriorating 1840’s Paris dresses. As I was selling antique lace at the time I decided to unpick all of the dresses and salvage what I could of the fabrics, lace, labels and hats. At the next Antique fair I went to, the textile dealers pounced on these wonderful treasures and by the end of the fair I had sold everything. This enthused me, so over the years I have sought out any costumes or fabrics that were damaged and needed a bit of TLC. Dealers and restorers were always asking for old cottons, embroidery silks and other items for restoration so I included antique and vintage haberdashery, trims and embellishments to my ever growing stock. I already had a large worldwide client base through my Oddities Antiques website but the items in the textiles categories were not being snapped up as quickly as I had liked so I opened the Rag Rescue website.”

The website received a very positive response and Sandie added more items to it, stocking up at “house clearances, auctions and on the internet, picking up items that other people would pass by.”  The website now lists a comprehensive stock of antique and vintage beads, buttons, ribbons, cottons, threads, tassels, patches and lace, alongside Sandie’s impressive collection of fabrics, all of which are rescued from old quilts, items of clothing, door curtains, etc.

She also sells a range of ‘scrapbags’, which contain four small scraps of antique and vintage fabrics sourced from England, France and Germany. She prices the bags at £3.50 for cottons and £4 for silky fabrics and they are ideal for crazy quilting, card making, fabric postcards and for use with the embellisher machine. Sandie even had a customer from Malaysia buy a number of scrapbags to sew together for shelf edgings. Whether you love florals, patterns or plain sumptuous fabrics then you are guaranteed to fall in love with Sandie’s shop.

Sandie believes the secrets behind her success are her philosophy of “keeping prices low so that the students, designers and crafters are able to purchase the products” and responding to the needs of the customer. Her scrapbags are testament to this as they came as a result of a request from students and visitors to trade fairs who were disappointed that they could only find large quantities of materials. She continues, “I know how hard it is to make a living selling craft work. I hope that I am doing my bit for the environment by saving these beautiful old textiles from landfill and encouraging the next generation to do the same.”

We think she is doing a great job!