Zero Waste Patterns: 20 Projects to Sew Your Own Wardrobe

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Helen : Oh, so smart. Another thing with kids clothes, like, if you’re cutting out something for yourself and you have some scraps leftover, you can use those often to make kids’ clothes. Maybe you piece a few fabrics together. You can have a lot of fun mixing prints for kids’ clothes and for yourself, obviously, but for kids’ clothes, especially. The aesthetic really suits it. So don’t be afraid to use your scraps to sew kids’ clothes too. When talking about sustainability in the fashion industry (and, by extension, in home sewing), one of the concepts that comes up often is zero-waste design (or sewing patterns). It’s a very interesting approach, that looks at the pattern cutting process in a completely different way, resulting in shapes that are functional, simple looking, but also very cleverly assembled at the same time. Zero waste is a term which has slowly percolated through the sewing community in the last few years, but it’s been around for as long as clothes themselves, with bog coats and authentic Japanese Kimonos possibly being the most common examples. Fabric was once a precious commodity and both utilitarian and luxurious garments were made with minimal waste, using squares and rectangles. Many of the modern zero waste patterns for home sewists utilise this same technique and it works well. However, once people desire more shape and therefore curves, zero waste becomes problematic and requires more creativity and lateral thinking. Helen : Yeah, especially when I hear people’s recommendations for cool zero waste patterns that we can try.

They keep textile waste to a minimum and anything they can’t use is donated, sold, or given new life as accessories. She sought to maximize design excellence while minimizing the amount of work involved. Her designs used the fewest seams or cuts possible, and she played with volume, shape, and fit by manipulating fabric and working with grainlines. Where other designers might use darts or curved pattern pieces, she frequently twisted bias-cut rectangles or half-circles at various spots in the bodice or waist to cinch in fullness while adding a decorative element. In this way, she laid the groundwork for much of the zero-waste design of the twenty-first century. Malaika’s rectangular zero waste patterns reduce the amount of clothing waste produced to 15-20% instead of the 30% fashion industry average. The obvious benefit of zero waste patterns is, of course, no scraps. At the beginning of 2020, I decided I would only make zero waste patterns from now on. The following year I reviewed how much scrap fabric I was generating. In fact, I was still creating scraps, but they were all of the rectangular useable type. They were the ends of pieces of fabric I already had or where I’d bought fabric online and had to buy in quarter-meter increments. Remnants are only waste if we don’t use them, but these are all very useable. Using a Zero Waste Sewing PatternBetween XS-XXL sizes, garments designed for all bodies and all gender identities, and a diverse range of models, zero waste daniel may be zero waste, but the brand is ALL inclusive. Upcycled materials (from Levi’s and Hanes) make up the majority of the garments in the RE/DONE collections. Less fabric and paper waste: Without having to print full scale paper patterns for all pieces you save on a lot of paper, and you will have little to no fabric waste during the cutting and sewing process! One of the things I am noticing about zero waste is how it can be more size inclusive. Although a design might be limited by the width of the material, an extra seam or two can accommodate larger sizes, which means it can be for everyone. You will see from the image above that many of the patterns are able to be made to any size.

Helen : Or, like, this a-line skirt’s just going to be a little less a-line so I can fit the two pieces next to each other.Helen : So zero waste sewing patterns are not patterns in the conventional sense. That is because there’s not usually paper pieces to them. Instead, they often include a cutting diagram and instructions. So the cutting diagrams can be a little puzzling to look at because the pieces look different than conventional patterns. But if you take the instructions one step at a time, it will all come together. So, for example, the instruction booklet will tell you to cut a rectangle 30 inches by 40 inches, and then cut another rectangle 12 inches by six inches. And by assembling all of those pieces and cutting all those parts, eventually you have all the pieces for the pattern. I’m simplifying it obviously, but you get the idea.