Just a bit of code that might be helpful to someone else.

The following goes in your theme's function php file:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_get_item_data', 'wc_checkout_description_tp', 10, 2 );
function wc_checkout_description_tp( $other_data, $cart_item ){
    //re-convert the fpd dtails from the json sting to an array
    $fpd_detail_arr = json_decode( html_entity_decode( stripslashes( $cart_item['fpd_data']['fpd_product'] ) ), true );
    //remove the first element as we are not dealing with shadows
    $fpd_elems_arr = array_slice($fpd_detail_arr[0]['elements'], 1);

    //loop each element and set the details to a var
    foreach($fpd_elems_arr as $elem_key => $element_arr){
        foreach($element_arr as $key => $value){
            //the currentColor value is set inside yet another array
            if(is_array($value)){
                foreach($value as $val_key => $val_val){
                    if( $val_key == 'currentColor' && !empty($val_val) ){
                        $fpd_detail_value = $val_val;
                    }
                }

            }
            //set the title value
            else{
                if( $key == 'title' && !empty($value) ){
                    $fpd_detail_name = trim($value);
                }
            }
        }
       //add the name and value pair to the detail array
        $other_data[] = array(
            'name' => $fpd_detail_name,
            'value' => $fpd_detail_value
        );

    }
    //return the final detail array
    return $other_data;
}

This is the code to get the description of your products in the cart. See attached for how it looks on my website. 

Is there anyway that inserting this code into the theme's function php file could crash my website, or are the two events entirely unrelated...?

Fantastic! Thank you life-saver!!!

Any updates with this after 7 months?  I couldn't get this working

Got this working. My problem is that it shows all the elements from the canvas. in my shopping cart. How can I change it that it only shows selected variation?

@Mark I have a solution to limit the output and also a bonus to swap out the hex vals for color names. First to limit what elements are shown simply add an if statement to the last block. Like so:  

       //add the name and value pair to the detail array
		if($fpd_detail_name == 'T-Shirt') {
			$other_data[] = array(
				'name' => $fpd_detail_name,
				'value' => $fpd_detail_value
			);
		}

You'l want to pay attention to the part: 

if($fpd_detail_name == 'T-Shirt') {

You can change "T-Shirt" to whatever you want to KEEP. Or you could use a != and EXCLUDE "T-Shirt" and keep everything else. I suppose you could build a switch if you'd like to keep more than one thing but I'm sure you can see what's happening here.

Bonus: Here is some code you can use to switch out the hex vals for color names. Add this to the block just above the last one: 

            //the currentColor value is set inside yet another array
            if(is_array($value)){
                foreach($value as $val_key => $val_val){
                    if( $val_key == 'currentColor' && !empty($val_val) ){
                        $fpd_detail_value = $val_val;
						// *** Swap out Hex for Color Names ***
						switch ($fpd_detail_value) {
							case "#000000":
								$fpd_detail_value = "Black";
								break;
							case "#ffffff":
								$fpd_detail_value = "White";
								break;
							case "#ff0000":
								$fpd_detail_value = "Red";
								break;
							case "#cccccc":
								$fpd_detail_value = "Heather";
								break;
							case "#ffff00":
								$fpd_detail_value = "Yellow";
								break;
							case "#003366":
								$fpd_detail_value = "Navy";
								break;
							case "#33cc33":
								$fpd_detail_value = "Green";
								break;
						}
                    }
                }

The custom parts are after "*** Swap out Hex for Color Names ***". Here we are just checking and resetting the final var to what we want. 

Hope this helps some peeps ;) 

-RJB