Sailing to Sustainability: Crafting Reclaimed Leather Goods from the Sea

At the end of a dock in Sausalito, California, a sewing machine hums inside a small workshop as kayakers paddle by and fishing boats sway in the lapping waves. Inside, Emma Casey transforms worn sails into rugged, durable bags under the name Landfall Leatherworks. The scent of leather mingles with the sea air, while every stitch speaks to her deep connection with the ocean. Her shop is more than a workspace—it's where discarded sails find new purpose, and where Emma's passion for sustainability and craftsmanship comes to life.

Handbags with purpose: Sausalito entrepreneur rescues old sails destined for the landfill.

After seven years at sea on a 40-foot sailboat, Sausalito entrepreneur Emma Casey has learned a thing or two about resilience and finding ways to make things work. It’s a characteristic she leans on as she builds Landfall Leatherworks, her business that sells handbags and accessories made from old sailcloth.

Repurposing Sails Into Bags - Circumnavigating With Emma Casey of Landfall Leatherworks.

For the Season 2 finale of That’s Not Rubbish!, Emma Casey of Landfall Leatherworks is taking us on a journey from the high seas to haute couture, turning retired sailboat sails into trendy bags. Can you imagine their durability! From her sailing stories of nearly circumnavigating the globe to the art of working with the unexpected, this episode promises to leave you inspired and packing for your next trip.

While cruising around the world for seven years, Emma Casey got used to having plenty of free time on her hands. Surrounded by just sea and sky for days on end, she took the time to appreciate the chance to slow down and connect with nature. She wrote, read, cooked, drew and sewed, an activity she learned during her childhood in Woodacre. And on one trip from Mexico to the Marquesas, she transformed the scraps of a tanbark sail into her take on a classic sailor’s ditty bag…

Last year I made an extremely difficult decision: I left a four-year relationship with a man and a seven-year relationship with a lifestyle. Boat life had come to define me. I was introduced as “Emma, my friend (daughter, granddaughter, niece) who is sailing around the world”. I was terrified to walk away from seven years of incomparable freedom; of living at the whim of the elements, of a comfortable home with a new backyard each day. It is essentially all my adult self has known, the scaffolding of my existence.

Navigating Fashion: Smithies Create

Shortly after graduating from Smith, Emma Casey ’15 boarded a sailboat in California and headed south by west.When she finally decided to drop anchor and settle down, she founded Landfall Leatherworks, handcrafting distinctive, durable bags from upcycled sails and leather at her workshop in Sausalito, California. “There’s a whimsical idea of the sails having been on voyages,” she says. “They each have a history ingrained in their fabric.”

I may no longer know what phase the moon is in or what the tides are doing, but I’m enjoying a newfound settledness. I recognize that my cruising life will always be a part of me, but that it does not define me. When I think back on those years, the sensation and mindset of longer ocean passages is the most striking, most foreign of all my experiences. It is the most distilled version of living I have known — where life becomes not about “doing” or “accomplishing” but about “being,” in a grand space of sea and sky with a fluid sense of time.