FabMo

Do you live in the SF Bay Area? Do you live near Mountain View? Well, if you do…

Have you heard of FabMo? It’s this wonderful small organization devoted to re-distributing all of the fabric cast off from discontinued designer fabric samples. Apparently after trade shows and product cycles and what not there are dumpsters full of fabric samples, and this local organization gets them, before they go into the dumpster, organizes them and has free distribution days once a month where you can make an appointment and go take whatever you want. Really. They have a donation tube to help pay for their small warehouse space, but it’s free and fun and great for teachers and crafters. Their website explains it better than I did.

But we went, and it’s the real deal. Rebecca picked out a treasure of small mosaic tiles and hand sized leather samples. I picked out a stack of roughly 1’x1′ fabric samples and a stack of doormat sized wool rug samples. Penelope has been falling over a lot lately…

I realized near the end that since they are mostly upholstery samples, even though I was sticking to the ones labeled as linen & cotton, they were probably covered in teflon and brominated flame retardants. And, being me, I sort of freaked out and haven’t really figured out what to do about it. I washed them all, and then started worrying that my washing machine was contaminated and the next load of baby sleepers I put in was going to be poisoned for ever. Yes, at the same time I am quite aware that I am being silly and have a problem. My home is statistically likely to already be full of bromine so, chill mama, right? We do what we can and try not to worry too much. How did we get on the topic of my plastic phobia again? Darn, I need to stop doing that.

Ahem. FabMo! They’re doing something cool, check them out if you live in the SF Bay Area.