Digital Patchwork

Today, in fashion manufacturing, leftover fabrics from cut-patterns account for up to 15% of the generated textile waste. Local fashion brand Anntian (DE) donated around 25 kilos of 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 (NL), the studio ANKB aims to further develop a new approach to making recycled textiles. Marian’s expertise lies in her knowledge of fibre composition and felt making for larger scale projects. Her work entails large tactile acoustic wool paintings and needle felted artworks.

With Marian’s dedicated input, the silk cut offs are employed in 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, digitally assisted embroidery is used to reinforce the patches with an open structure grid to ensure the stability of the fabric. Within this template, ANKB and Acousme established a handmade intuitive patchwork with a controlled graphic grid available as a larger textile or as a made-to-measure cut pattern ready to be reincorporated in new collections of garment making.