Embracing the tradition of storytelling through quilting, we collaborated with Pasadena-based, women-led up-cycling collective, Reweave L.A., on a unique patchwork quilt that serves as social commentary on waste in the design industry.

Design studios and furniture showrooms are swamped with fabric samples which are inevitably discarded at high volumes each season. Discouraged by the environmental impact of textile waste (Los Angeles has the largest landfill in the county), and energized by the challenge of reframing the value of ‘scraps’, we struck out to craft an enduring quilt out of bygone fabric samples from the houses of Missoni, Scalamandre, Holly Hunt, Kneedler Fauchere, and Donghia amongst other showrooms at the Pacific Design Center, that contributed their deadstock samples to Reweave L.A.

While most quilts aspire to docile domesticity, this collaborative quilt has far broader social and political aspirations. Not only does this one-off object reframe the value propositions around discarded fabric, but the design—composed of a spectrum of skin tones and rainbows—seeks to serve as a kind of flag to all ethnicities, genders, and cultures. Here too, the quilt, long a feminine device for passing down stories and traditions tells a new story, one in which the cycle of wanton textile waste is reversed, and art arises from the ash-heap. Ultimately, this quilt begs us to use the ‘left-overs’ we encounter in our lives to upholster and augment our white spaces and build a better future.

Quilting has a storied tradition of making the best out of fabrics—from blue jeans to kitchen curtains—which have outlived their purpose. Be it the quilts of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, a group of local African American women who have been crafting quilts for generations, or ‘Petit h’, the sustainable design studio within Hermès, AUX and Reweave L.A. are bringing the ‘up-cycling’ vernacular into the collectible design space, with socially minded results.

Now more than ever, as environmental concerns have created a quarantine of consumption, we hope this work will inspire you to observe your part in the waste cycle, and realize the power of your purchases on the earth.