HAND Weaving
San Francisco has a vibrant cycling community and many bike shops with a surplus of inner-tubes that are destined for the landfill.
Inner-tube rubber is a beautiful, inert material, and unlike outer tire rubber is non toxic. It is soft and supple like calfskin leather and it doesn’t have a strong rubber smell. We wash the inner tubes, then hand cut each one into thin strips for weaving. We have two warp threads, one is 100% linen and the second is polyester for strength.
The rubber and sometimes leather offcuts are woven into the weft threads to form beautiful patterns. After we have taken the fabric off the loom, the bags are seamed along the sides and bottom. We trim the strips of rubber from the sides to create our signature fringed edge and then finally our leather handles are sewn on by hand.
