Home

Hi! I'm Sophia DiMatteo. This is my documentation page for Fabricademy 2024-2025 at GreenFabric Brussels.

About me

I'm a crafter and a maker from San Francisco, California. I've always loved creating and making things with my hands. I’ve focused primarily on sewing, but I love exploring new ways to create, including jewelry making, drawing, dying, crocheting, baking and more. I have a background in Mathematics and love understanding processes. I like to think about all my project ideas as puzzles to solve. I’m excited to learn with Fabricacademy to discover new techniques and combine my interest in math and technology with working with textiles and expand the depth and breadth of my knowledge!

My background

I studied Mathematics and previously worked in the tech industry working in finance / business strategy. Since I was about 15 I’ve been sewing as a hobby and through the years been focusing more and more on sewing and creating other tangible things. I have the desire to go deeper and deeper and make this practice a bigger part of my life. I love trying new challenging projects. I find that designing and making patterns and bringing projects into fruition combines my love of math and puzzles with my sewing skills and desire to work with my hands. In the last year I’ve been going a little further, to not only design and sew creations, but to work with and change the fabric itself to get my desired outcomes. I really love to have a hand in every step of the creation process (material, design and construction). I love finding ways to use design to help solve problems in my everyday life (see ergo bag below) and I love making things for practical uses. I’m also very interested in “making something out of nothing”, that is, using everyday materials to create wearable creations, to both reduce waste and for the fun of finding creative ways to use the ingredients and things around me.

Previous work

Naturally Waterproofed Raincoat

I made this raincoat for my dog, Bruno, who hates going out in the rain. I recently saw a lot of nice waterproof garments (for humans) advertised online and was curious if I could make similar things using natural ingredients. I saw some videos on Youtube of people making waterproof fabric using beeswax as sustainable replacements for plastic wrap to store food. I wanted to apply this technique to wearables so I started with where I had the biggest need: my dog’s aversion to rain. I bought some cotton fabric from the scraps bin at the fabric store and created a pattern. I used beeswax and a little bit of coconut oil and ironed it on the fabric until I got an even coating and I was shocked by how water resistant it really was! You can see the original fabric (pre-waterproofing) on the bottom as the lining. I love the way the waterproofing changes the color and texture. I wanted to stray away from velcro or buying any plastic closures despite their ease of use because I find that the velcro fills with dog hair and in my experience plastic closures can degrade with use so I opted for two metal D rings and a button to be more resistant to wear and tear.

Ergo Bag

This is a simple version of something I want to expand on to solve a problem that is near and dear to my heart. As someone who suffers from back pain (and someone who brings a million things with them everywhere they go), I am often thinking of the best way to counteract the discomfort caused by my purse. Inspired by bags with similar versatility, I made this purse to satisfy my desire for the many types of bags I want depending on my current needs and pain tolerance. Sometimes a shoulder bag will do, often I prefer the cross body, I use the fanny pack for when my shoulders are too sore, for long days out I require a backpack and if I’m dancing the criss cross backpack holds everything tight to my body and evenly distributes the weight. I love having the flexibility to “change” my bag while I’m out and about. This is a problem I’m currently working to solve using conventional sewing methods, but I’m excited to explore what technology can add, for example adjusting the design for my specific body after studying digital bodies or using soft robotics.

Natural Dying

I have been experimenting with natural dying and created this shirt to combine all the different colors I got out of my recent batches. I did lots of research online to find out how to prep the fabric. It was tricky to scour and mordant the fabric in my small Paris apartment while being careful to keep my food safe areas food safe, but it was worthwhile! Inspired by a few different shirts I’ve seen, I combined my favorite parts of each design, created the pattern, and sewed this shirt using four colors of fabric from three types of natural dye. I was interested in using kitchen scraps or food that can be used for cooking after creating the dye for a minimal waste dye. I used black beans in two different batches, the first came out much grayer (see the straps), while the other was much bluer after letting the beans soak in the dye longer (bodice). The back straps are dyed with turmeric and avocado pits. I loved the process and learning how to tweak the colors with the same ingredients by adjusting my process. I would love to explore this further when I have access to more space and experiment more with different types of natural dyes!