Textile repurposing and sustainable garment design

A method of upcycling a plurality of clothing articles to form a garment, comprising the steps of:

• a. forming said plurality of clothing articles into an aligned stack;
• b. making a plurality of cuts into said stack, thereby producing a plurality of fabric elements;
• c. obtaining a garment pattern, said garment pattern being comprised of one or more pattern pieces, each of said one or more pattern pieces having an outline associated therewith;
• d. selecting one of said one or more pattern pieces;
• e. positioning some or all of said fabric elements on a substrate within an outline associated with said selected pattern piece in such a way as to completely cover said selected pattern piece outline without extending beyond it, thereby creating a fabric layer on said substrate;
• f. applying an adhesive to a top of said fabric layer;
• g. placing a paper layer on said top of said fabric, thereby adhering it thereto;
• h. stitching the paper layer, the fabric layer, and the substrate together, thereby forming a unified pattern piece sandwich;
• i. soaking said unified pattern piece sandwich for a period of time sufficient to dissolve said adhesive and to separate the paper layer and the substrate from said fabric layer;
• j. performing steps (d) through (i) for each of said at least one or more pattern pieces, thereby producing at least one separated fabric layer;
• and,
• k. using said at least one separated fabric layer to form the garment.

A method of upcycling a plurality of cloth articles to form a garment, comprising the steps of:

• a. forming said plurality of cloth articles into an aligned stack;
• b. making a plurality of cuts into said aligned stack, thereby producing a plurality of fabric elements;
• c. obtaining a garment pattern, said garment pattern being comprised of one or more pattern pieces, each of said one or more pattern pieces having an outline associated therewith;
• d. selecting one of said at least one pattern pieces;
• e. positioning some or all of said fabric elements within an associated outline of said selected one of said at least one pattern piece in such a way as to completely cover said associated pattern piece outline, thereby creating a fabric layer;
• f. applying an adhesive to said fabric layer;
• g. applying a paper layer to a top of said fabric layer;
• h. stitching said paper layer and said fabric layer together, thereby forming a unified garment component sandwich;
• i. soaking said unified garment component sandwich for a period of time sufficient to separate the paper layer from said fabric layer, and sufficient to dissolve said adhesive;
• j. performing steps (d) through (i) for each of said at least one or more garment components, thereby producing at least one separated fabric layer;
• and,
• k. using said at least one separated fabric layer to form the garment.