Your waste is my treasure!

Working with organic waste can bring circular solutions  for the implementation of closed loops of organic feedstocks.  At Fab Textiles we have been working with food waste since October 2018 and many researchers through their internship developed and evolved recipes for making food waste biocomposites.  There are already some small companies that produce bioleathers with waste, one of them from Mexico called ECOPLASO that I had the possibility to get to know in one of my conferences at ¨Demand Solutions¨ in Miami 2018.

RECIPE / COFFEE BIOLEATHER

2G sodium alginate
2G dried coffee grains of any organic waste in powder
2G olive oil
5G glycerin
33G water 
(everything is in grams using a precision scale)

MIX for calcification
7G of calcium chloride in 100ml of water

Various organic waste bio-leather samples

STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS:

1- Weight all the ingredients with a precision scale.
2- Mix the powder together with the glycerin and the olive oil.
3- Add the water and use a mechanical blender to obtain an homogeneous solution.
4- Cast in a silk screen print frame ( you can create your own using any textile and wood)
5- Mix the Calcium chloride with water in a sprayer bottle.
6- Spray the biomaterial on top and bottom with the calcium chloride solution.
7- Let the calcium chloride act for 5´ and rinse with clean water.
8- Let the composite sample dry in a dry and warm place for one week. Depending on the thickness and the size of the sample it may take longer. It will also vary due to the local temperature and humidity.
9- When the product is dry you can separate it from the frame.

Note: As the sample dries, it can become curved, so place it between two level surfaces and some weight on top so at the end we can obtain a really flat sheet

The laser cut pattern can be found and downloaded HERE

These Wunderpants were inspired by the anonymous Superheroes and Wonderwomen of the world, who are everyday fighting to save the environment one design at a time.

They have been made from the standard recipe of a gelatin-based Bioplastic, which can have written in our book publication HERE

In addition to this recipe we added wax, which improves the materials hydrophobic properties as well as provides the material with a sheen. The color in this piece was made by blending various acrylic paints directly into the pot while cooking the Bioplastic.

The after the curing time of 3-5 days depending on the thickness, the result is almost a leathery texture.

The flat sheet of Bioplastic is then laser-cut using a pattern designed in Rhino, based on the custom measurement of the mannequin. Then the pieces can be manually assembled. All the connections are seamless using a modular system, in order to eliminate the need for sewing as well as to add detail to the garment.

The Wunderpants are will be exhibited from February – June 2018 as part of the exhibition «What’s next?»: The materials that will shape the future at Materfad at the Museu del Disseny de Barcelona. See the link below: http://es.materfad.com/servicios/11/exposiciones-de-proyectos-y-materiales

Team: Clara Davis, Noor El-Gewely, Aldana Persia, Mohamed Elatab, Anastasia Pistofidou

Activated Charcoal Top

The top was made using the same material and technique as described above. The main difference with this one was that the black color was created by adding activated charcoal to the bioplastic. This also makes the material conductive.  The CNC laser cut pattern in this garment creates the openings and draping.

Team: Clara Davis,  Anastasia Pistofidou, Mohamad Elatab

Our annual Bootcamp will take place in Milan !  After the first edition of the Textile- Academy , from September 2017- March 2018, we come back for our annual Bootcamp, where professionals, future instructors, students and artists gather together to have a skills exchange and training of 40 intensive hours.

If you are interested in becoming a future Node and you did not have the chance to attend one of our Bootcamps, if you are a student that always wanted to learn about 3D printing in Fashion, Bacteria textile dying, Graphene 3D printing and open source circular fashion, this is the course for you! If you are very far away you can also attend our course online!

In order to reserve your spot , click on the image below:

Detailed schedule:

Reserve your place HERE !

 

During a week we created samples of bioplastic with gelatin base, experimenting and testing the limits of this material.

Bioplastic made with gelatin base is a hydroscopic, low temperature biopolymer. It's a simple recipe than anyone can try at home you just need gelatin, glycerol and water. 
You can find the recipe and the explanations step by step of how to make bioplastic in the pdf "The secrets of bioplastic" at the end of this post.  

You can get different harness or (elasticity) depending on the quantity of glycerol you put inside your mixture. 
You can also change the opacity and the texture by creating foam with spitting air inside the heated mix.

You can try to mix bioplastic with many materials like fabrics, fibers, threads, pigments, tape, wood, metal...

You can also decide to not put any other material than bioplastic and just play with the textures and the patterns you can make.

During our experimentation we discovered than bioplastic :
- can take any shape (volume, surface, sheet...)
- can have different performance by changing the dosages of water, gelatin and glycerol (elastic -> rigid)
- can be transparent & smooth or opaque & fluffy if you add air inside the mix
- can dissolve in the water (it is not water resistant)
- can be easily recycled and reused by warming it again
- don’t smell good (especially when you cook it, once dry the smell begins to fade)
- glues to wood, metal, cardboard but not on glass of plastic surface
- doesn’t resist the heat (never put bioplastic in the oven, it will melt !)
- if you create a  large volume of bioplastic it will tend to mold
- it will shrink and change its shape while it dries (use a frame if you don't want it to lose it's shape)

If you are curious you can read and learn more about bioplastic inside this pdf "The secret of bioplastic".

Fashion needs to be updated! We are making a bespoke program for the new hybrid fashion and textile designers, artists and curious technologists combining the essential tools and knowledge of our digital era.

Lectures :

Hacking the fashion industry  by Zoe Romano

Open source hardware for soft fabrication, by Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet

Tutorials :

Computational Couture with Rhinoceros and Grasshopper by Aldo Sollazzo,

E-textiles and wearables by Angel Muñoz and Cristian Rizzuti

Bio couture , Bacteria textile dying and Bioplastics by Anastasia Pistofidou and Cecilia Raspanti

On our JAM you will make groups and collaborate with local and international artists for developing projects of the things you ve learned throughout the week!

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