Fabricated Tales: Billie Jean Yarn

Before you get reading about our latest yarn, get yourself in the right groove and get your feet moving along to thisOK, now we’re ready to begin :)

Here’s a story about our newest yarn family member, her name is Billie Jean. We searched high and low for this baby, we wanted to create a denim yarn that would be just like your fave pair of jeans – a yarn to love and wear forever. Plus, it had to work with our mission to find yarns with a bit of soul to give you a clean knit conscience. Our search finally took us to Central America, where we found The New Denim Project who made upcycled denim woven fabric AND whose values match ours. We shook hands and got to work on a new sustainable yarn. We got our first samples back a few months ago and we were literally jumping up and down in the studio with big ol’ smiles on our faces. The life of Billie Jean had begun! 

Tell me more

Billie Jean Yarn has been made from pre-consumer denim remnants from production at denim mills. In jean production and like most clothing production, there is tons of waste. In this case, after jeans are made, denim scraps and offcuts are gathered, ground back down into fibres and then these fibres are respun into yarn.

The great news is that the whole process involves no chemicals or dyes and saves on average an incredible 20,000 litres of water per kilogram of upcycled material.

In a nutshell

Billie Jean is so special because it’s…

All this sounds great, but let’s get down to the knitty gritty (you know we love a pun).

What does Upcycling actually mean?

Upcycled fabric minimises the environmental impact of textile production and decreases the amount of waste that goes into landfill.

Google says:

Upcycling, also known as creative reuse, is the process of transforming by-products, waste materials, useless and/or unwanted products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value.

THERE IS NO PLANET B.

Let’s put this into context, we save 20,000 litres per kilogram:

Billie Jean Yarn has been developed in collaboration with The New Denim Project, a project within a 3rd generation family textile factory promoting conscious consumption and investment in sustainable materials. Photo credit: The New Denim Project.

Shop the yarn and whole collection here

Make sure we can find any of your Billie Jean makes by tagging us on instagram with #woolandthegang and #billiejeanyarn :)))

11 Comments

  1. What wonderful news. cant wait for month end to purchase some

  2. I love it when I can see the recycling process in a product that I’m interested in. This is so cool.

  3. This.Is.Awesome. I need to try this out. What is the overall texture of this yarn and what types of clothing would you recommending being made from this?

  4. This is bloody brilliant! I can’t wait to try this yarn out and blog about it. Well done guys on yet again another awesome product. 👌🏻

  5. I want this! Seriously, my favourite type of yarn. I see no way that denim will ever go out of fashion (for want of a better word), and it’s my favourite thing to wear. Really looking forward to wearing this :)

  6. Very excited for this and can’t wait to get my knitting needles on some of this very unique yarn. Thank you for your commitment to sustainable practices and sharing the process with all of us.

  7. Looks fabulous! Want to make the sweater, perfect with jeans.
    Thanks

  8. Can’t wait until the yarn comes in. Want to make the crazy feeling sweater.
    Thanks for a great product.

  9. I love the look of this yarn and will be interested to see a response to the question above of how it knits up and what it feels like in the hand. It looks aas though it drapes well.
    One small point of issue – surely it can’t be dye free as the denim will be dyed. Presumably you mean that no dye is added?

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