As today, in fashion manufacturing leftover fabrics from cut-patterns account for up to 15% of generated textile waste. Fashion brand Anntian donated organic silk cut offs from their last collection for the pilot project Digital Patchwork initiated by the Berlin based studio A New Kind of Blue.
In collaboration with artist Marian Verdonk from Acousme the studio ANKB aims to further develop a new approach of making recycled textiles. Marian’s expertise lies in the knowledge of fibres composition and felt making for larger scale projects. Her work entails large tactile acoustic wool paintings; needle felted artworks.
With the help of Marian’s dedicated input the silk cut offs are employed into larger hand laid and patchworked surfaces. After that, the work is felted together with a needle felting machine to entangle the fibres of the silk and wool underlayment together. The result is a larger, unique, patch-worked and felted fabric.
By needle punching the silk and wool a torn yet delicate look is created giving more depth to the smooth silk surface combined with the wool. In the last step of the process digital aided embroidery is used to reinforce the patches together with an open structure grid to ensure stability of the fabric. Within this template ANKB and Acousme established a handmade intuitive patchwork with a controlled graphic grid available as larger textile or as made-to-measure cut pattern ready to be reincorporated in new collections of garment making and closing the loop of textile waste.
Credits
Collaborating fashion brand: Anntian
Development textiles: Acousme
3D scans and visuals: Yelta Köm
Funded by: WORTH Partnership Project, part of COSME, European Commission’s Programme for the competitiveness of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, 2022/2023.