Austin, TX — What happens to a pickleball after it cracks? At one Austin pickleball facility, some are ending up somewhere unexpected: on a dress.
The Picklr Austin West co-owner Karen Hoisington says the facility can see more than 100 players a day. With that much play comes plenty of abandoned, cracked and broken pickleballs. Rather than throwing them away, Hoisington started collecting them.
Her first idea was a little more conventional.
“Well, I thought, oh my gosh, I’m gonna make Christmas ornaments out of them. I’m gonna be so crafty. So I did try that one last year, and it was just a complete mess.”
The ornaments didn’t work, but Hoisington still didn’t want the balls going into the trash. She continued saving them until she had garbage bags full.
That’s when Austin artist Joanne Cabarrus came along.
Cabarrus is part of Austin Trash Fashion Designers, a community she says was created to bring together artists working with discarded materials. She began experimenting with wearable art made from recycled materials after participating in Reuse on the Runway in 2025.
Her pickleball idea began almost accidentally. Cabarrus attended a pickleball meetup and noticed a basket of cracked balls. After researching what happened to the balls when they could no longer be used, she began contacting local facilities looking for discarded ones.
The Picklr Austin West had plenty.
Hoisington said she was thrilled when Cabarrus offered to take the stash because the facility had been looking for something useful to do with it.
Cabarrus then began cutting apart the colorful balls and assembling them into wearable pieces. She quickly discovered one practical problem: pickleballs get surprisingly heavy when you use enough of them. Her first piece is almost entirely made of the balls, prompting her to limit how many she used in subsequent designs.
Her second design became even more personal.
Cabarrus noticed that some discarded balls still had the names or initials of club members written on them. Instead of hiding those markings, she deliberately positioned the pieces so those names could remain visible in the finished artwork.
The creations are now displayed at the facility, where Hoisington says members stop to examine them. Some have even approached Cabarrus about creating pieces for their homes.
Cabarrus hopes the project inspires more than fashion. She wants people to reconsider everyday objects before automatically throwing them away and hopes other artists will experiment with discarded materials, too. She even hopes the attention could help inspire more options for recycling pickleballs locally.
And there are more balls available for anyone with an idea.
Asked whether another creative could come get some of the facility’s surplus, Hoisington’s answer was simple:
“Absolutely. You’ll have to fight with Joan, but absolutely, yes. We want people to be using them.”
REUSE ON THE RUNWAY
Joann will be participating in Austin Creative Reuse’s Reuse on the Runway event on:
October 17, 2026 at Branch Park Pavilion
Tickets are still available. All looks shown in the show incorporate some element of reuse materials or techniques. The goal is to challenge designers to reuse materials in new ways and inspire the audience to see fashion as both spectacular and sustainable.