Sara Philine Conen - Textile Design

fabric making process

Finally knitted into fine jersey the
new fabric captures the typical cool
denim look, now appearing in a new,
cosy softness.

The fine wadding gets spun
into a thin yarn. Due to its
delicateness, the yarn lends
itself exquisitely to knitwear.
The light blue colour varies
in shade, depending on the
colour of the original material.
The colour is mingled from the
indigo blue outside of a classic
pair of jeans and its off-white
inside; the warp and the weft of
the former woven textile. Every
now and then dark blue or ochre
colour nibs are blended into the
overall greyish blue. These two
are the most popular colours,
used as sewing yarn for denim
garments, so these colours appear
in the new yarn as well. The subtle
yet rich patterns of the material
tell the story of its origin.

This is the fluffy, light blue
wadding; attained during the
fine combing process. This
wadding already looks cosy
and you can easily imagine
comfortable, casual clothing
made from it.

Next, the denim strands are
roughly combed to separate
the single fibres out of the
small woven pieces. During
this step of unraveling the
structure, the formerly woven
material dissolves and is turned
into a chunky wadding.
This wadding can already be
reused to produce felt. To create
a fine knitted jersey out of the
formerly robust woven denim,
it needs another step; fine combing.

The collected garments will
then be cut and torn apart to
be turned into a huge pile of
tiny denim fabric strands.
During this process, the small
shredded pieces pass a rotating
apparatus, where hard pieces
like metal buttons and the
typical studs found in jeans
are separated out, as these
should not go into the new
fabric material. These pieces
might be used for another
recycling process. But this is
another story...

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collection

When a new fabric is created
from existing clothing, in this
case from worn out jeans and
denim garments, the first step
is to collect the pieces which
will be used as source material.