Midterm Project Documentation

Name: Mehr Un Nisa Javed

Date: 28th Oct 2019

Professor: Marcela Godoy

Objective: Write midterm project documentation

Title for the Project: “PakiCraft”-

I did not have a name for my project until last moment and then I got a chance to talk to the founder of the AfriCraft and found out his idea behind the name of the up-cycling/ recycling company he is running. Therefore, I thought it would be pretty interesting to have a broad category of PakiCraft which could be later use by me to broaden my work from just apparels to other sorts of useful crafts as well.

Statement for the Project:

“Don’t be into trends. Don’t make fashion own you, but you decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress and the way to live.” —Gianni Versace

I designed shirt basically out of trash. It will inspire the people that we do not have to follow the trends instead we must create our own trends and express problems through our clothing. Therefore, wearable will represent the trash management problem in Pakistan and how this trash could be efficiently converted into wearables and create more employment.

Materials Used-

Materials used:

1.potatoes/ rice sac- which is basically made out of plastic

2. Plastic tapes

3. Plastic bag handles for pockets and belt of the shirt

4. Apple’s plastic wrapping for choker

5. Threads

6. embroidered patch found in trash

Materials I used: These are based on the trash which is produced most in Pakistan.

Plastic Sac because we have these sacs a lot in Pakistan because it is an agrarian economy and we used these sacs for potatoes and other vegetables. Thus, I have seen these sacs all my life.

Description of the midterm Project: I made a Pakistani styled long shirt with a embroided dupatta which is a part of the culture. I made shirt out of the sac which are commonly found in Pakistan as it is an agrarian economy. All the colours used in the outfit are mainly inspired by the Pakistani culture.Moreover, I added a choker to it which is considered to be very essential in Pakistan. The choker is basically the plastic in which apples are wrapped when we buy them. I added this because again, Pakistan is an agrarian economy so I wanted to revolve around that concept of how to save plastic produced in large amounts in agrarian economics.

Inspiration:

For the midterm I made a dress but specially focusing on my cultural dress- Pakistani dress as it would represent my culture and also, would be helpful for me in the future because I want to do recycling in the Pakistani Industry as no one in my country has every worked on it on a large scale and I would want to work as a designer and help to save our environment starting from my very own country.

Research:

Then, I did more research on this and the need to build up this project and I found out that;

The industry, driven by fast fashion, has steadily become one of the most serious polluters in the world. Clothing manufacture was never exactly tidy, what with toxic dyes, copious amounts of water needed for growing fiber and processing fabrics, and waste from factories. But in 2015, carbon emissions from clothes surpassed those emitted from all international flights and all maritime shipping combined. Cotton, for example, uses more pesticides than any other crop—and organic cotton takes up more land and much more water than conventionally grown cotton. At the same time, clothes are worn for less time than they ever have been previously. Every year, 12.7 million tons of textiles enter American landfills; in 2015 in the UK, 300,000 tons of clothes went in, about ten pounds per person. Giving old clothes to charity isn’t the charitable act you might think it is—many of the clothes made today are of such poor quality that they cannot be sold again.

The looming Plastic Pollution in the world

The looming PLASTIC POLLUTION problem in PAKISTAN

Image result for waste plastic problem in pakistan

Process:

I started with first taking a sac and then cutting it into the shape of a shirt. After that a sewed it and then started to work on the pockets. I made pockets out of the another colored sacs and then made it borders using the handle of a plastic delivery bag. Then I sewed it. After that, I sewed the end of the pockets and the sleeves and then also sewed the borders of the shirt to make it look neater. It was pretty harder to work on this sac material and it got really messy at times as well because the threads started to come out. For making the geometric design at the two borders of the shirt I used different colored plastic tapes and sticked them. Finally, for the dupatta (which is very important part of a shirt in Pakistan) I used the packaging material of white colored and then I sticked embroidery pieces (which I found on trash) on to it.

Significane:

I started with designing a wearable but that was Pakistani Kurta style. The Kurta is mainly made up of plastic as Pakistan and trash bags because PAKISTAN is a developing country and has a lot of waste management issues. The maximum usage there is of plastic because people are not really aware of the bad effects of the plastic due to low literacy rate and low encouragement by the government to decrease the usage of plastic and move towards sustainability. Recently, in the capital of Pakistan plastic was banned but still the policy was eloped without almost no implementation so this project will HIGHLIGHT the issue. Therefore, my project of making a wearable will actually help the fashion designer in my country to think more about the environment and try to help them in thinking in the direction of making apparels in future out of the huge amount of trash which is being generated in Pakistan. hopefully it will be replicated in large scale and will bring a new wave of environment protection in future and also become a NEW TREND. Moreover, I also hope to see newbies like me bringing a new wave and not being afraid of starting a new venture and taking risk to develop things out of trash.

Final Output looks like this:

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