Ep 37. Velvety Natural Flock Fibres from Textile Waste with Sara Robertson, Annika Syrjamäki and Sarah Taylor

Flocking is one of those techniques we have all touched without knowing its name: the velvety surface on a wallpaper, a piece of packaging, a couture garment or a car dashboard. It is made from tiny fibres, electrostatically charged so they stand upright in an adhesive, and for most of its history those fibres have been nylon, polyester or viscose.

In this episode of No Ordinary Cloth, Mili is joined by Sara Robertson and Sarah Taylor of Sara + Sarah Smart Textile Design, and Annika Syrjämäki of Maison du Flock, the team behind FLOCC, a Scotland-Netherlands collaboration. This work begins on the finishing floor of MYB Textiles, a heritage lace mill in Scotland, where yarn clipped from finished cloth collects in bags beside the machines. FLOCC turns those cotton clippings, and later silk and mixed-fibre waste from Sudbury Silk Mills, into flock fibre that is, in Sara's words, "baby soft".

In this conversation, we discuss

* An explanation to the flocking technique and why the usual nylon, polyester and viscose fibres are a microfibre problem

* Where FLOCC began: the yarn clippings collected at the side of the machines at MYB Textiles, and why a lace mill's cotton clippings are already short enough to be a good flock fibre

* The route from waste to flock

* Cotton, silk and mixed-fibre waste and the range of flock fibre that can be produced. Scaling to100m of flocked fabric

* The search for a bio- adhesive

* Passing testing and standards

* The scale catch-22: recyclers need bigger scale, small studios need a kilo or two

* What the team learnt at Future Fabrics Expo and Textiles Recycling Expo

* What they would tell someone at the start of a similar journey