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Part of Which creative mending ideas fix which problems
Working from scrap: how repair-led makers source material, in plain terms
How menders who work from salvaged cloth handle unknown fiber content, what the labeling rules say about scrap and reclaimed fiber, and how to build a stock.
Repair-led makers — people who mend for a living or as a practice — get most of their scrap from a short list of places: clothing they already own and have worn out, thrift stores shopped for fabric rather than for a garment, offcuts from anyone who sews, and organized reuse, from fabric swaps to textile scrap services. Whatever your creative mending ideas start from, the cloth itself usually has no known fiber content, and that is the problem this article works through: where the material comes from, how to test it, and what the labeling rules say about it.
What to take away
- Scrap stock is mostly fiber of unknown content, and that is a normal category rather than a failure.
- Test unknown cloth before you commit it to a repair. A burn test and a wash test cost one square inch.
- Sort by behavior, not by appearance. Two identical-looking cottons can shrink differently.
- Reclaimed fiber has a legal meaning, which is useful when you are reading a secondhand label.
Unknown fiber is a recognized category
When a product is made from miscellaneous scraps, rags, odd lots, secondhand materials or waste of undeterminable content, the rules on products containing unknown fibers let the disclosure say exactly that. The rule is section 303.14 of 16 CFR Part 303, written by the Federal Trade Commission under the Textile Fiber Products Identification Act, and it allows a label to read that the product is made of miscellaneous scraps of undetermined fiber content, or 100 percent unknown fibers.
That is worth knowing for two reasons. It tells you the regulator expects scrap-based production to exist, and it tells you what to write on your own storage labels: unknown is a legitimate answer, and it is better than a guess you will later trust.
What reclaimed and virgin actually mean
Secondhand fabric shopping produces a lot of confusing wording. The same part of the rules — 16 CFR Part 303, the Federal Trade Commission's regulation under the Textile Fiber Products Identification Act — governs the terms virgin or new, and it is narrow: those terms may not be used unless the product, fiber or part described is composed wholly of new or virgin fiber that has never been reclaimed from any spun, woven, knitted, felted, bonded or similarly manufactured product.
So a bolt-end marked virgin wool contains wool that has not been through a previous fabric. Reclaimed wool, sometimes sold cheaply, has shorter fibers and less strength, which changes how it behaves as a patch.
Testing unknown cloth
Cut one inch square from a hidden area and run three checks:
- Burn test, outdoors or over a sink. Cellulose fiberscotton, linen, rayon — burn fast and smell like paper. Protein fibers — wool and silk — smell like burning hair and self-extinguish. Thermoplastics — polyester, nylon and acrylic — melt and bead.
- Wash test at the temperature the target garment gets. Measure before and after.
- Wet strength check. Wet the square and pull it. Rayon and other regenerated fibers weaken badly when wet.
Ten minutes of testing prevents the failure where a salvaged patch shrinks a quarter inch on the first wash.
Where scrap actually comes from
Your own worn-out clothing is the first channel, and the cheapest: you already know how it washed and where it failed. Thrift is the second. Goodwill, Salvation Army and Savers are the large chains in the United States, and their racks hold the pieces that yield the most flat fabric — men's dress shirts, plus-size linen, wool trousers, tablecloths.
Offcuts are the third. Tailors, alteration shops and home sewers throw away pieces big enough to patch with, and asking costs nothing. Organized reuse is the fourth: fabric swaps at quilt shops, libraries and guild meetings, local gift groups such as the Buy Nothing Project, creative reuse centers that resell donated craft and textile material, and textile scrap services such as FABSCRAP, which collects waste from commercial designers and puts it back up for sale. Deadstock — mill and design-house overstock that never reached retail — is the fifth, and the steadiest source of large, consistent pieces.
Take-back and donation programs sit at the other end of the same pipe: Goodwill and Salvation Army resell what is donated to them, Patagonia's Worn Wear takes back and resells its own garments, and denim drives run through Blue Jeans Go Green keep old jeans in circulation. Buy for the fabric, not the garment, and any of these channels will keep a scrap pile fed.
Building a stock that stays usable
Salvage accumulates faster than it gets used, so the discipline is in the intake, not the storage. Wash everything on arrival, cut it down to a size you would actually use, and label it with what you know and what you do not. A bag of unwashed thrifted shirts is not stock; it is a future decision you have deferred.
The ideas list is much easier to work from when you already know what your scrap is made of, and the cost side improves once salvage, rather than new yardage, supplies most repairs.
