Interview with Hannah Mathews, owner of the Cleveland Sewing Company
When my local environmental group was looking for a new banner, I decided to try to find banners that are not made of petroleum based materials. Wow; not much luck there! There’s lots of vinyl or pvc; there’s even stuff from China that says it is made of eco-friendly, 100% biodegradable cotton. Well, I clicked to start the ordering process, just to see what turned up. It sounded too good to be true, and then I saw the phrase, “100% Poly Cotton.” Hmmm. It didn’t say that on the opening page. In one place, it read “made of 100% natural cotton fabric,” but turns out that is misleading. Sure, they use SOME 100% cotton, but the material is called Poly Cotton, and when I googled that I found out that it is a mix of polyester and cotton, often 65% polyester, which comes from petroleum. Add that to the fact that it has to be shipped from the other side of the globe, with all of the energy and pollution that adds to the process and I quickly crossed them off my list. Wasn’t there a way to purchase material that wasn’t going to end up as microplastics in the water we drink and the food we eat? I don’t want to be eating the shirt off my own back, do you? Isn’t there a company that makes tote bags and banners entirely, 100%, from 100% cotton or some other natural fiber? Well, after a little clicking and searching, turns out it’s in Cleveland.
Hannah Mathews worked for years as a contract seamstress for a local designer and in her own business, Captiva Designs, making costumes for baton twirlers and figure skaters out of stretchy material that wasn’t always very good for the environment. About ten years ago, she needed to draw more customers and work, and so, she started Cleveland Sewing Company as a company that could make products in small batches, primarily for smaller companies. After the Covid pandemic, she started focusing more on sustainable goods. Currently, she sells to individuals online as well as to small businesses, and does shows about three times a month, in addition to talking to people about sustainability in the fabric business. I interviewed her recently about her business, products and the sustainable mindset that helps guide her product development and lifestyle.
Covid, it turns out, was part of what got Hannah thinking about finding more sustainable ways to live. The pandemic intensified some of the reliance on single-use products and plastic products that people in our country had become accustomed to in recent times. We didn’t know what we were dealing with when the Pandemic broke, and people often react to fear by taking extreme measures. That meant using a lot of single-use, disposable products in an effort to avoid spreading the disease. But in terms of the environment and sustainability, Hannah suggests, we took a big step backwards. People don’t realize what a huge impact a small change in your lifestyle can make, however. Now, we can move things the other direction in a number of simple ways: for instance, going from buying giant six-packs of paper towels to using sustainable hand towels. Our single-use culture was not the way our grandparents and great-grandparents lived, so it’s possible to get back to more sustainable, thrifty ways of living, starting with common, household products you see and use everyday.
Hannah saw the needs of people as the pandemic unfolded and had the Cleveland Sewing Company get involved in helping others by starting a donation project in which she organized about 50 volunteers to make cotton pleated masks for local police and fire stations, food pantries, and nursing homes. People wanted to help out and this project gave them a way to do that. They made about 10,000 masks total. Hospitals, as we know, were crazy busy and didn’t have ample supplies of disposable masks during those times. Workers at Cleveland Clinic, Southwest General Hospital, and MetroHealth, among others, were freaking out asking for more of these reusable, washable masks. They distributed the masks to homeless shelters as well. Hannah’s mom found out where people needed masks and let others, including neighbors, know where to take them. At a time when masks and other protective gear were being used one time and then thrown away, Cleveland Sewing Company helped provide the same protection in a way that was better for the environment and more sustainable.
Hannah also found other ways to produce alternative products that serve people’s everyday fabric needs. She worked with a friend, Jane Pierce, to make dryer pillows instead of dryer sheets. People use dryer sheets with their laundry, but often do not realize that the waxes and oils coat all of your clothing, often making it less absorbent and putting those substances in constant contact with your body. Instead, for the last eight years, Cleveland Sewing Company has produced lavender filled dryer pillows as an alternative to chemically treated dryer sheets. Many people don’t know that this alternative is available.
I asked Hannah if she always used more sustainable fabric materials and she said that when she started out, like many people, she worked with conventional cotton, grown with pesticides. But she always had ideas about making products in a way that was also good for planet. It’s not easy to find fabrics that are natural fibers, without pesticides. But after some searching, she was able to obtain them. When you go shopping at many stores and look at the labels, you may think that cotton and polyester (an artificial fiber made from petroleum) are the only options for fabric. But there are many that have been overlooked by the big manufacturers, and some of those are made without adding pesticides to the process. Cleveland Sewing Clinic started using organic cotton, hemp, and linen. Organic cotton does not have pesticides. Hemp and Linen have long fibers, are naturally pest resistant (so no pesticides needed), grow in poor soil, last even longer than cotton and require less water for growth. These are all great alternatives to clothing made from fibers treated with pesticides and artificial fabrics like polyester, nylon, rayon, and spandex.
Hannah noted that those artificial fibers have made the textile industry a kind of nightmare: they have become the second largest polluter behind oil production. You might say, how could that be? I don’t see smog coming from my T-shirts and bath towels. But if you look at the production process, and how the products break down after use, you will begin to understand the problem. Chemical solvents and large amounts of water need to be used to process fibers so dyes can print on the fabric. You may not see that in your hometown because companies centralize production in far away places you won’t be visiting anytime soon, like India. Overseas fabric production doesn’t have to be compliant with OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor.
Hannah explained that in parts of India, you can understand what color they are using for dying fabrics on a given day by looking at the color of the river. If they are using purple dye, the river is purple. And the chemicals used are not safe for people. She recommended a film, River Blue, about the pollution of the fabric industry and how it is poisoning water worldwide. (Trailer for River Blue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfPMeMGbrj4) Processing is energy inefficient, the solvents and dyes are dangerous for us and other living beings. Fast Fashion is intentionally made with poor quality, so you will dispose of it sooner and have to buy more and more afterwards. That’s great for the company’s profits, but what is the result? More and more artificial fabrics derived from petroleum and made with hazardous chemicals are going into landfills and our oceans quicker and quicker. When they start to break down, they become microplastics that stay in our water and are ingested by other living things and become part of the food supply. We are, quite literally, eating the shirts off our own backs.
What’s worse is that we aren’t aware of where our fabrics come from and where they go after we use them. We don’t know how our own choices are giving incentives to a wasteful and hazardous production process and the toxic waste stream it is producing. So many decisions are made without our involvement. For example, if you used to wear hand-me-down clothes from your siblings or cousins (which is great), you may think that giving your clothes to an institution that offers them to other people has the same effect. But as Hannah notes, when we donate to organizations like the Salvation Army and Goodwill, most of what we donate does not go out for sale. A lot gets thrown out or baled and sent to huge second-hand markets in foreign countries. Those bales contain everything; they are not sorted. So if a bale contains a lot of snowsuites and other clothing, and it is sent to Ghana, in Africa, the snowsuites are going to get thrown out there, or burnt. Incinerating these products does not diminish their impact on the environment, it just spreads it out. High end manufacturers overproduce but don’t want to flood the market which could lower the price people are willing to pay, so they often incinerate the extra production. They could find other uses for those materials: shred it and use it as stuffing, or insulation for punching bags. It’s brand new material, but it often gets incinerated, releasing toxic gasses into the air, and turning the material into ash or the next layer in the landfill due to overproduction and near-sighted thinking.
So I asked Hannah how Cleveland Sewing Company is different. What does she do to get better fabrics and how are they better. One way, already mentioned, is obtaining organic cotton, hemp and linen. Producing fabric products with natural, sustainable fibers that are not laced with pesticides and use less water is probably best for our health and our environment. But since about half of all fabrics made today are made with artificial fibers, we need to think about what we can do to lessen the environment impact of those materials as well. With all of the waste in the textile industry, Hannah has found ways to divert fabrics from going into landfills and use it to make products available on her website. For instance, have you gone to furniture stores and looked at fabric samples for the type of couch or chair or drapes that you are considering for purchase? What happens to those samples when the company switches to a different set of colors or materials? Many get thrown away, but not if the Cleveland Sewing Company shows up.
One of their most popular items are tote bags made from discontinued upholstery samples. They are unique and a lot of people like that. While they are often polyester, or a cotton/polyester mix, they are staying topside; when otherwise they would be going straight into landfills, oceans or incinerators. You might say, why don’t they just recycle them. But recycling is not like turning a clay turtle into a clay giraffe. To recycle fabrics that are a blend of polyester and cotton, chemicals and energy have to be used to separate the cotton from the polyester, putting a strain on our energy resources and adding to the chemicals being introduced to our environment. It’s better to repair and reuse things directly, and make great tote bags in the process.
Another way Cleveland Sewing Company reuses fabric is with landfill-diverted cotton canvas from large businesses. Take a look at the picture of rolls of fabric in the back of an SUV on the front page of the Campfire Dispatch this month. That’s brand new fabric that would have gone straight into the waste stream. But Hannah works with companies in the Cleveland area to take remnants that they cut off and cannot use in their production process. They used to throw away brand-new, perfectly good cotton fabric until Hannah worked out a way to take it off their hands and use it for various products including banners. The fabric is clean, brand-new, and now it’s being made into products you can buy online instead of going straight into landfills or incinerators. The rolls are cut, at Cleveland Sewing Company, so that they throw away as little as possible. They often save three inch wide strips to wrap up things. Fabric is so useful; why just throw it away?
In addition to the totes and banners, some other popular products at Cleveland Sewing Company are paper free towels. Hannah said she pushes those since they are an easy change to make in people’s lifestyle. The more single-use we can replace with reusable products, the better. She says her Veggie Crispers are a tough sell at first, but once they have them, people love them. What are Veggie Crispers? They’re cotton drawstring bags that extend the life of your vegetables. Just wet them, wring them out and put vegetables in them, in the frig. It extends the life of the refrigerated vegetables, and you can also use them at the your favorite store’s bulk food section when you’re buying bulk almonds or granola or whatever. Hannah is always working on ideas for new products to help others easily integrate more eco-friendly habits into their lifestyle.
On a larger scale: Hannah is participating in a working group for a textile recycling program that is starting in Cleveland. It’s a big project with great promise. She is also working with Cyohoga Recycles and the Office of Sustainability in Cleveland, as well as in the textile branch of Plastic Free CLE. She said that Cleveland, like other industrial cities, has been given the reputation of a center of industry and pollution in past years, but has made great strides towards creating a better environment. The focus on Sustainability actually began with a previous mayor, Frank Jackson, and Cleveland’s current mayor, Justin Bibb, is embracing it. Cleveland has transformed itself from “The Mistake on the Lake” into a “Green City on a Blue Lake,” and anyone who has visited recently can see the difference already. But the work takes constant effort, as new industries can still create pollution and waste even if it is in a form we are not used to seeing and are easily overlooking, like the waste and environmental dangers in the production of many textile products.
But Cleveland Sewing Company is doing their part. Hannah’s main motivation is to make little changes in her materials and production process and to believe in the power that people have in their household, as individuals, to think in a way that is broader about our environment and our people. Think about who is making your products. How far are those products being shipped? That takes energy and adds to our pollution problems. Buying local can mean less shipping and less pollution, but buying at your local HomeDepot, Walmart or Target does not necessarily mean buying local. If it is made far away, especially outside the governing regulations of the United States, you don’t know how the workers are being treated, you don’t know what goes into the production process that is harming our water, air and food supply. If something is cheap, ask yourself why: what person is paying that price, what river is paying that price? It’s cheap for a reason. Do we want to see more tragedies like the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh, in 2013, when 1,134 people working in five garment factories of the eight story building were killed in the structural failure and building collapse? A TV station had shown cracks in the building prior to the collapse, but the building owner, Sohel Rana, declared the building safe and the management company for the workers threatened to withhold a month’s pay if they did not return to work. Over 1000 died and 2,500 people were injured. We don’t think about that, and people don’t want to hear about it, but when you spend your money on products made far away, you are supporting whatever working conditions people there are forced to endure. If you buy closer to home, you can find out more about those working conditions. You can let people know you value their work and want them to have a workplace safe for them, and safe for our environment.
It’s great to see a company making environmentally sensible use of what other companies were throwing out. We need more companies like Cleveland Sewing Company. Hannah is hopeful for various endeavors in the next year, which include creating a database for who is doing what with textiles, helping businesses and other entities make better, more conscious choices of textiles, and, hopefully, touring a company in Brazil which recycles post-industrial waste, specifically recycled cotton and recycled water bottles and turns them into fiber: shorter fiber cotton blended together with recycled water bottles for longer fibers, without adding water, or dyes, to make yarn that is woven beautifully into fabric. She wants to see how their process works, first-hand, to divert waste from landfills. While Hannah believes that visualization is good for setting goals, it can be better to just let the doors swing open and see what you can do. “You never know,” is her motto, so check out Cleveland Sewing Company and find out what new products and services they can offer the environmentally conscientious buyer.
If readers want to find out more or get involved, Hannah as suggested the following links:
Cuyahoga Recycling: www.cuyahogarecycles.org
Rust Belt Riders composting programs: https://www.rustbeltriders.com/
Rust Belt Fibershed’s flax/linen growing project: https://rustbeltfibershed.com/
Cleveland’s Sustainability initiatives: https://sustainablecleveland.org
The lavender filled dryer pillows are made by Cleveland Sewing Company for the company, Zjayne. https://zjayne.com
Cleveland Sewing Company website: https://clevelandsewingcompany.com