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3. Circular Open Source Fashion

Research & Ideation

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When I saw the Week 3 assignment, what immediately came to mind was that my friend KATO had already created a modular piece. Using the national flowers of various countries as motifs, colorful felt was laser-cut and freely connected together. During a workshop for Fablat Kids, my daughter wanted to send a message to my friend ILARIA's son and ended up creating the national flag of his home country, Argentina.

The interlock cleverly utilizes the stamens and pistils of each flower, ensuring they are securely connected.

Additionally, other creations included bracelets wrapped around the arm, and my daughter designed her own clothes, combining and wearing them. She also made bouquets of flowers.

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Now, at the same time, the idea of connecting small textiles like this to create a larger fabric is a concept shared with sashiko. Sashiko is a technique that originated in the past when cotton was expensive, used to join small pieces of cotton textiles together or to reinforce them.

Sashiko originated in a time when fabric was precious, and it involved stitching scraps together to make a single piece of fabric for clothing. The stitching patterns had different types and meanings.

Embarrassingly, I only learned about the origins of Sashiko when I happened to visit a special exhibition on it at the Textile Museum in Oaxaca, Mexico, last spring. It showcased the history of clothing used in everyday Japanese households. The garments on display were not the glamorous kimonos but rather simpler garments with similar patterns to kimonos, featuring indigo blue as the main color, along with other subdued dark colors like black. While imagining the thoughts of people from that time, I decided to use fabric scraps to create items that incorporate elements of nature, such as tea leaves or flowers.

References & Inspiration

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Based on these points...the design will use tea leaves as a motif. The idea is to incorporate the concept of Sashiko (traditional Japanese stitching) by utilizing fabric scraps without wasting them to create a single textile.

Process and workflow

I thought about connecting tea leaves to create one unified piece. First, I hand-drew the design and then made it by cutting paper. The idea was to cut along the leaf veins and connect them.

After that, I used green felt in a gradient resembling the color of tea leaves.

I used a laser to cut the pieces and then connected them. When I changed the direction while connecting the colors midway, the pieces either connected in a straight line or formed an arm-like shape.

TRY 1

Step 0

Paper version

Step 1

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Using laswr cutter, I set up the same parametros as for cutting paper.

Step 2

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Conect the oppsite direction with the male and female parts, it gonna be like a chain.

conect the male part and female part with same direction, that will be like a necklaes to make a curve design.

so I use 2 colors/multiple cultures to show the different expresion.

SOOOOOO

Based on these points, could we perhaps use the vein patterns of leaves to create an interlock design?

TRY 2


Assembly videos

learn how to add video of tutorials or time-lapse of the assembly, etc

From Vimeo

Sound Waves from George Gally (Radarboy) on Vimeo.

From Youtube

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Fabrication files


  1. File: Modules 

  2. File: Laser cut sheets