TOOLS OF TRADE - shred it

THEME

FASHION --> Current system is destroying earth and people, there is a lot of waste & environmental polution. The clothing is made under bad conditions, child labor and so on. Something that keeps me busy is to find a way to make local productions possible again, but what about the fabrics we use? More & more collections are made per year and it is hard to keep up the pace and create new garments that are unique and longer lasting. People are easily bored with there clothes. They throw them away and buy new clothes.

In my work I always start with experimenting with materials and I look for new techniques and try to make themy own. that is why I think it is interesting to find a way to recycle these clothes and make new yarns and to return the craftmanship in the making of clothing.

INSPIRATION There are already some designers/artist who worked with the concept of recycling into yarns:

this Columbian designer uses the waste of the making of clothes and paper to create garments and it gives a really big feeling of craftmenship

Studio Baggerman recycles old plastic bags into new yarns and after they weave it back into new 'plastic' bags but these last longer then 'normal' ones, they also make beautifull fabrics out of it.

There is also a artist who recycled old newspapers into yarn and the possibilities are endless

Faustine Steinmetz is a designer who recreates key pieces, mostley in denim, but instead of using already made denim she weaves them, this gives the clothing a very rich and interesting feel and it isn't made under forced labor. But what i am missing here is that the yarns are still made somewhere and we don't know under what conditions... this gave me the idea of trying to find a way to make yarns out of old clothing.

Tool 'IDEA'

Fabric 'shredder' a tool to shred the clothes back to fibers or really small strips so it can be spun back into yarns and these can be used again for weaving, knitting and embroidery. If this works out there is even a possibility to spin the fabrics myself by using the very old fashioned drops spindle and make this work automatic.

A few simple ways to shred fabric are:

Using a - papershredder - scissors with 5 blades (the ones used for cutting herbs) - pasta-machine - rolling blades used for cutting clay

These are starting poins for me to think about the technical part of the shredder and think about ways to adjust these tools to make them work for my project

The drop spindle is a very old tool to spin fibers into yarns and it is not used a lot anymore because it is very time consuming but it is so rich in craftmanship. For the drop spindle there could be a possibiliy to use a hand-drill mechanism that can be adjusted to spin the fibers.