Threads for Care: A new Retail collaboration for Dorothy House

Dorothy House is excited to announce our new retail umbrella brand, Threads for Care, collaborating with local makers, creators and stylists as a new and innovative way to reduce waste.

One of our key goals in this year’s Sustainable September campaign is to educate and raise awareness of the amount of wastage faced by charity shops when it comes to donations. For every bag of donations Dorothy House receives, only 29% of the items can be sold in our shops. From incomplete board games and jigsaw puzzles to damaged items of clothing, these items mount up and must be recycled or disposed of at increasing costs to the charity.

Donation quality is an issue that many charity shops are facing, thanks to the continuous rise of the fast fashion industry. Brands drive a high turnover of clothing, focusing on quick turnarounds and low-cost items, but these are often discarded soon after being worn, resulting in huge amounts of textile waste. Specifically in the UK, approximately 350,000 tonnes of clothing are sent to landfill each year.

A sustainable collaboration – Threads for Care

In an aim to reduce waste costs amongst our 29 charity shops, Dorothy House is excited to be collaborating with local makers, creatives and stylists to develop an exciting new retail umbrella brand, called Threads for Care.

Threads for Care will offer upcycled and reworked pieces created from preloved and unsaleable items from our retail waste (a reduction in landfill) and transformed into beautiful new sustainable collections.

There’s Only One

We’re delighted to be working with local hand screen-printer and applique artist Amy Laws from There’s Only One, who creates bespoke pieces entirely from secondhand fabrics. In this exciting collaboration with the Hospice, Amy will be reworking t-shirts, hoodies, and shirts from our rag waste bins into a limited range of 100 bespoke t-shirts that will be sold in selected Dorothy House shops with all profits going to support Hospice care in our community.

Amy’s t-shirts will drop in store on 15 September and can be found in Bath Argyle Street, Frome Clothes and The Shires Pop-Up in Trowbridge. They will also be available in our Find Ubiety lifestyle shop, located on London Road in Bath. Be sure to follow @theresonlyone.uk on Instagram where you watch Amy’s creative process.

Eco Bunting

Alongside Amy’s creations, Threads for Care will also feature bespoke pieces created by Sharon Goold from Eco Bunting. Sharon has previously worked with Dorothy House, using rag waste to create reusable, fully lined bags which have been sold at our monthly Warehouse sales. Sharon’s contribution to Threads for Care will include a selection of unique clothing pieces created unsaleable fabrics, as well as even more of her fabulous bespoke bags, which will be available for purchase at our Pop-Up shop based in The Shires in Trowbridge.

We’ll be sharing Sharon’s story and connection with Dorothy House on our social media later this month, so watch this space! In the meantime, you can follow @ecobunting over on Instagram to view her latest creations.

By reworking clothing that we cannot sell, Amy and Sharon are not only helping us to reduce the number of items going to landfill, but they are also helping us save money that can fund vital end of life care across our 800 square miles.

The Threads for Care range will be available in selected Dorothy House shops from 15 September 2025. Share your purchases with us on social media (make sure you’re following our newly refreshed Retail page @dorothyhouse.shop) and use #SustainableSeptember.