We have once again partnered with our friend Patrick Grant at Community Clothing, to create 100% denim notebooks. Offcuts are collected from the cutting room at their Lancashire jeans factory, and separated by colour (black, indigo and blue). The scrap is then sent up the road to Paper Foundation in Cumbria, where it is pulped and pumelled in a series of traditional hand paper-making mechanisms, and mixed with water, to create pulp that can be turned into paper.
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Fun facts about our Mark+Fold for Community Clothing notebooks:
- The covers are 100% denim with nothing added — this is a rare thing in paper-making, as most papers have other ingredients used such as sizing.
- The notebooks are 100% UK-made, with all the papers made in Cumbria and the printing and binding taking place in Suffolk.
- We have matched the thread colours to the jeans, so if you have a matching pair you'll be able to spot this nice little detail.
The new stock is available to order now. The reason it was out of stock for a little while was simply because the first batch sold out so quickly, and then we had to wait for Community Clothing to make more jeans and generate more offcuts! Over the summer we have been busily working away to make more paper and now they are ready.
Available in 3 colours (black, indigo blue) and in both A5 size (half letter / 210x148mm) and A6 size (passport size / 148x105mm). We also offer them in pairs and sets so you can build a system that works for you.
Why make notebooks from denim offcuts?
The garment industry has a massive waste problem, since even the most efficient pattern-cutting process uses only 90% of the fabric, with the remaining 10% going to waste. Meanwhile linen 'rag' from the garment industry used to be used in paper-making over 100 years ago, but this has become less and less common.
The Mark+Fold for Community Clothing range makes use of all the scrap created in the production of jeans at Community Clothing's jeans factory in Lancashire.
How is the paper made?
The shredded denim offcuts are turned into paper pulp, with the addition of water and 8 hours of working in the 'beater'. The dyes already present in the denim lend a beautiful blue colour to the paper pulp, with no additional colours added, nor bleach.
The pulp is scooped out onto a flat sieve, allowing the water to drip through, leaving a matted fibre on the surface of the mould. This is then turned out onto woollen felts in a process called 'couching.' The felt gives texture to the finished sheets of paper.
The sheets of paper are stacked in a pile called a 'post' before being placed in a press to remove the remaining moisture. This 40-tonne press is similar to those used in traditional book-binding.
Learn more about the paper-making process
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Where are the notebooks made?
The paper is made in Cumbria at Paper Foundation, not far from where the paper for the inside pages is also made. This all then travels down to a family-run bookbindery in Suffolk, where Vicki and her team sew the notebooks on a Singer sewing machine. This is similar to the ones used to make the jeans themselves, though the one used for bookbinding is more industrial and heavyweight, to cope with the thick paper.
All Mark+Fold products are made as locally and sustainably as possible and in this case the product is 100% UK-made.
How did the collaboration between Mark+Fold and Community Clothing come about?
Funny story! Mark+Fold founder Amy went to Oxford University with Patrick back in 2004 and they were both at New College. Amy was studying for her undergraduate degree in French and Philosophy and Patrick was doing an MBA. Shortly afterwards he took over Norton and Sons, the Savile Row tailor, which was to prove the first of many pioneering businesses he would go on to run. He set up Community Clothing in 2014 to reinvigorate the British garment industry and as a social enterprise it measures its success on hours of work generated rather than revenue alone.
In Spring 2024, Amy and Patrick got to talking about how the rag trade used to supply scrap to paper mills and that this had fallen out of fashion. And meanwhile the garment industry had a massive issue with waste, so they decided to showcase what can we done when you look for smart zero-waste initiatives like this one.
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