Designing a dress from scratch with recycled materials
I created a mood board to have a soft approach to this big project.
It all begins with an idea. I was tasked to create a dress with only recycled materials. I wanted to use brown paper bags since I have a lot from day-to-day life.
I took an Eco Fashion course where we were given 13 classes to create a functional outfit from scratch that would be presented to the school on Earth Day. The catch is that I was only allowed to use recycled materials. I was not allowed to purchase anything for the outfit, yet we were given some helpful tools such as a hot glue gun, scissors, thread, needles, velcro, and duct tape. Our professor taught us simple stitches to give us enough background to sew materials together.
After the basics I had to brainstorm what I was going to make and what I wanted to make it with. I came to the conclusion of a brown paper bag dress. I created this mood board (insert) and discussed how I could make this dress come to life with the bag material.
Sketches of 2 possible directions. Decided to go with the 2nd drawing.
The first step was gathering the materials without purchasing them. I told my friends that if they had any brown paper bags that I would gratefully take them. I felt super resourceful and good about the decision of holding onto many things I would throw away. I would catch myself brainstorming how I could incorporate each little scrap I had. I took each bag and cut out all the creases to make a flat “fabric”. I know that I couldn’t use needles and thread to sew pieces together or there would be holes throughout the dress. That is certainly not the style I was going for with this project.
After collecting I started with the top which I wanted to have a corset-esk look. I accomplished this with the use of hot glue to create edges rather than leaving it flat and bodiless. I then added straps which were brown paper bag handles. I created a unique criss-cross style in the back to add more fun.
Painting the Paper
Next challenge was creating the bottom half of the dress. I measured my mannequin then tapped four large pieces of paper bag together. I used duct tape on the inside of both the top and bottom to create a sturdy shell. This made the dress less delicate and a tip I appreciated from my experienced professor.
