According to the Textiles Future article, the idea of textile waste is disappearing because people are seeing the potential in old fabrics and are giving them new life. Over the past four years, I have accumulated a lot of t-shirts from various college events and organizations that I probably will not wear once I graduate. Recently, I was talking to my friends about how we could keep these shirts that hold so many wonderful memories. One of my friends mentioned that she was making a quilt out of hers and it gave me the idea to make mine into pillows. According to the C2CAD article, 4.5 million tons of clothing and footwear are produced in the United States every year and only 1.25 million tons of postconsumer textiles are recovered for reuse. Re-purposing old t-shirts into decorative items will be a great way to increase the number of textiles that are reused instead of thrown out.
As I mentioned last week, the Cradle2Cradle process is a way of repurposing old materials into something new of equal or more value. This week I was once again inspired by the technical metabolism of the C2C process. To refresh your minds, according to the C2C article, technical nutrients are items that are useful to the industrial process. This means that they stay in the technical cycle because they are composed of materials that might be toxic to the environment. My design concept of turning old t-shirts into pillows is technical because the t-shirts are turned into a new and exciting product that is useful to the consumer. This concept can also involve the biological metabolism by using t-shirts out of organic cotton that have been dyed using natural and safe dyes. The pillows would be stuffed with organic wool or pieces of old t-shirts. This way, when the consumer tires of the pillows, the materials are able to decompose into the environment without releasing toxic chemicals.
Kelsey,
ReplyDeleteGood job on your blog this week, I really enjoyed reading it. Like you mentioned it's hard to get rid of shirts when they are still in great shape and have a sentimentally value to them. I was actually thinking about getting rid of some of my scarves that I do not wear anymore but I hesitated because they are still in good shape and I love their patterns. I was thinking I could save them and do something with them when I thought I could turn my vintage looking scarves into decorative pillows. I thought I would share this idea with you. There are so many things we could do with our unwanted cloths and turn them into items for decoration. Since I have so many t-shirts that I want to type I think I would like the idea of making a quilt out of them. Would you propose to have a company that takes in all of your shirts and makes a quilt for you or would you have to find someone on your own?
Great idea, how might the T-shirts you currently have now continue in the cycle after you make them into quilts or pillows?
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