3. Circular fashion#

My idea#

This week I worked on my first interlock-fashion-garment. Carolin Voglers creation impressed and inspired me. I also wanted to design something modular and variable from a special material. As a basic form, I have chosen a circle with a wide semicircular slot and two small slots on the sides. The drawing was created in Adobe Illustrator as a laser-finished file and saved as a pdf.

My first prototype#

My first prototype was cut out of colored paper with our lasercutter Epilog ZING 6030 and put together. So I could make the first tests whether the plug system works.

Watch out our ViNN:Lab Wiki Lasercutter

As a highlight, I’ve considered a 3D plug-in structure. A butterfly made of darkblue felt. Also here I made the first prototype out of colored paper to test the functionality.

My materials#

I chose a great and versatile material. It’s called SnapPap - a vegan leather. It is a washable paper in leather look. It can be dyed, ironed, sewed, printed, glued and much more. Look at the website SnapPap - vegan leather

SnapPap is a paper-plastic mixture (cellulose and latex). The material contains no pentachlorophenol, PVC or BPA and is neither harmful to the environment nor to health. SnapPap combines the advantages of paper and fabric and is absolutely tear-resistant. It can be processed unreinforced, easy to sew and the surface is abrasion resistant and does not form lint or nodules.

My production#

First of all, I duplicated my basic shape and cut it out on a DIN-A3 sheet Snappap with the laser cutter.

For the SnapPap I used the following parameters for cutting: - Speed: 80 - Power: 20 - Frequency: 500

For the felt I used the following parameters for cutting: - Speed: 80 - Power: 15 - Frequency: 500

I also tried other fabrics and summarized the results in this table:

Then I colored the circles with textile paint in the color petrol in a water bath. The still wet circles I pinned to the tailor doll until I came to the desired result.

In the impressions you can follow my work steps.

Here you can see my result on the Open Source Circular fashion catalogue

My impressions#

My result of the week#

evaluated interlock-system#

In order to optimize my interlock fashion system, I made the slots in the circles narrower. The connector system works much better, as you can see on the picture. Three different materials were tested in the prototype: felt, artificial leather and paper. The plug-in also works between the different materials. You can download the update of the lasercut file here