Activity
:
Reconstruction
Conjoined, Spliced and Pieced Techniques
Created by
Redress
,
2025
Objective
In this activity, you will explore a variety of techniques to reconstruct post-consumer garments into innovative new shapes whilst striving for zero waste. This is part of the ‘REMAKE’ circular strategy, with a focus on designing for low waste.
What to prepare
Time
- 1-2 weeks
Tools
- The layout of the brief is in a ready-to-print format, which you may choose to print directly and share with your students.
Activity brief
This 3-part activity has been designed by three educators and experts championing the move towards sustainable fashion: Jay Quek, Senior Lecturer of Fashion Design, Raffles Design Institute, Singapore; Jennifer Whitty, Sustainable Fashion Systems Professor, Designer, Researcher and Writer, Parsons School of Design, The New School; and Holly McQuillan, Fashion Designer and Author. The inclusion of their important work further supports our learning platform and encourages the sharing of best practices across the world.
Prior to the activity kick-off, we suggest that your students review the topic ‘RECONSTRUCTION’. The reconstruction technique honours clothing waste as a resource, instilling resourcefulness in those who utilise it. In line with the ‘REMAKE’ circular strategy, the focus is on designing for low waste.
You are challenged to create a garment using post-consumer clothing waste, with one of the three techniques: the conjoined technique, the spliced technique, or the pieced technique. These techniques can be applied to any given clothing, including post-consumer corporate uniforms.
Each technique sits on a sliding scale of zero waste to minimal waste to allow for variance in the quality of the post-consumer clothing that is your raw material. Consider the suitability of each raw material fragment for the technique.
- The ‘Pieced’ technique allows you to work around the ‘flaws’ in the post-consumer clothing as it allows for the use of a more traditional flat pattern-making approach, where you can cut panel pieces to an appropriate size.
- The ‘Conjoined’ and ‘Spliced’ techniques rely on good quality clothing as raw material, as none of the original is removed, and two or more are sewn together.
The most important thing when working with these techniques is to know your materials. Examine their stretch and be true to your materials — consider how much you want to celebrate their provenance or history with functional and aesthetic nods to their previous life. Or if the original clothing has been overly ‘loved’, you may need to remove or fix parts of it to transform it into a new item. You are therefore strongly encouraged to adapt, remix, and make changes accordingly, depending on the wear and tear on the clothing. For example, you might remove certain areas or add pleating, gathering, or other methods. If you need to add trims from external items, try to improve your garment’s overall sustainability by finding end-of-roll or cloth from past projects to do this.
Most of all, embrace the beauty of imperfection and having something that tells a story — how it was rescued from a destiny of becoming waste and is now truly one of a kind.
Outcome
- A final garment sewn, pressed, and finished. Possible garment types include:
- Dresses: Conjoined long dress, spliced dress, spliced sweater dress
- Tops: Spliced T-shirt, conjoined cardigan, spliced shirt, conjoined shirt
- Leggings: Pieced leggings
- A record (with quantitative and qualitative data) of how much time it took you to make everything, as a tool to share with others in whatever method is appropriate (online, physical exhibition, etc.)
- 1-2 page write-up on the process, how you have embraced the provenance or history of the original clothing, and how this has altered its function and/or aesthetics
- A presentation to the rest of the group at the end of the activity reflecting and reviewing the learnings
- (optional) A short video — in the spirit of open source, share about the techniques you used with the wider community, so that these processes can take on a new life and demonstrate an alternative narrative for fashion. The video can demonstrate your adaptation of the original reconstruction technique, including any changes you made to your original design. If you are sharing this video on social media channels, please cite and reference, tag, or link to Space Between and Jennifer Whitty.
Footnote
Whitty, J. (2019). “A spotlight on: Space Between: fashion activism in New Zealand” in Global Perspectives on Sustainable Fashion by Gwilt, Alice Payne, A & Anicet Ruthschilling, E (eds) Bloomsbury.
Whitty, J. (2017). Operating in the third space; the Space Between. In R. Earley, & K. Goldsworthy (Eds.), Circular Transitions Proceedings (pp. 32-45). London: University of the Arts London.
Whitty, J., & McQuillan, H. (2016). Models: Fundamentals project: Space Between. Fashion activism through entrepreneurial artefacts and information toolkits for open fashion. [Upcycled clothing, video, website, post-consumer clothing and textile waste]. Making Circles exhibition, Circular Transitions, Chelsea College of Arts & Tate Britain, London: University of the Arts London.
Whitty, J., & McQuillan, H. (2015). Fundamentals range [Design archive]. Space Between.