I worked in Singapore as an interior designer for 4 years designing 4 and 5 Star Hotels in South East Asia. During that time, we used to have ample amount of diverse materials in our material library. There was a constant hustle bustle of suppliers updating our material libraries with new collections, taking back the old ones, making their brand visible to us.
We used to have spring cleaning once a year and it was in my first year there, I got the biggest shock of my life. Tons and tons (okay, exaggerating a bit) of fabric samples and other materials were being discarded because we either had excess of a design , outdated designs, we did not use a particular brand anymore and so on. Discarding meant they would be burnt of in incinerators or dug into landfills. I couldnt believe that two big murders were going to take place. Firstly, our land of fresh air would be polluted because of this lethal activity and secondly beautiful absolutely new fabric pieces would go waste when one can use it in so many ways! These were not some ordinary pieces. They were top quality, highly durable, passing all international martindale abrasion and fire tests. Unable to let them go, I took home the bigger samples so that I could to make use of them someway somehow.
During the weekend, I started by making a diary. This was my childhood hobby so it was not a toughie for me. And I absolutely loved the outcome of the beautiful embroidered fabric nicely wrapped on the cover of my notebook. This red notebook in the feature image was the first one that I made Being a die hard stationery lover, I made many more with all the fabric lives that I had saved and helped saving our environment in 0.000000001%. It felt great!
On my further researching, I realized there were so many companies who would be burning these kind of new fabric pieces/ samples or disposing them in landfills only because there was no use of them. These pieces are small sample pieces and unless you patch them up, nothing really can be done with them. However I started making more diaries with these new unused bigger samples that I had collected and these acted as the cover to all my diaries. This is when I took it upon myself that upcycling this kind of fabric would be one of my concepts ‘when I open my own brand’.
Eventually I established Artisanns Nest in 2015 and it goes without saying my first collection was created out of upcycled fabric pieces. This is how it all began and currently I have Beanbags, Pouf, Cushion Covers, Notebooks (Upcycled fabric and wallpaper), Coasters, Place Mats under this collection. One of the main reasons, you will not get two of the same design. Each piece is exclusive with no repeats. They are mostly patchworked with my design instincts saving the environment in my own humble way.
