Hi ZWDO Community!
My name is Anouk van de Visch, I’m from Holland but living in Spain for almost 20 years already. I lived 15 years in Málaga and since 4 years I’m living in a village 30 min driving from Madrid.
I always liked textiles and making the things what I have in my head.
When I finished my study in Amsterdam I worked for a few years as a secondary school teacher in textile art and handicrafts till I decided to move to Málaga for studying Spanish. I always liked Spain and wanted to live in Spain.
I’m aware we have to take care of the sea and the environment and try to waste less.
So I like to make my own clothes or upcycle them.
When I heard about Zero Waste Pattern making I found it very interesting. In June this year I did an online workshop from Moda Sostenible Barcelona with Verónica Larraín. She mentioned a few Zero Waste patterns designers and talked about Holly McQuillan & Timo Rissanen’s book.
So after the workshop I went looking for more information and saw the video with the spiral trousers from Holly and I thought 'wow I would like to make a pair of those too!' Trousers are always very difficult for me to make them, I don’t know why but they never fit properly.
So I attended the online workshop of ZWDO which had a focus on Spiral trousers/shorts and I started to make miniatures prototypes.
Click on the images to enlarge.
Spiral Trousers - zero waste pattern designed by Holly McQuillan.
I then made some print test using Shibori tie & dye techniques:
My miniatures looked perfect but then I tried to make the trousers in real scale…. and that was another story! After making 2 trial trousers it didn’t work out exactly how I wanted them to be, they were too wide on my hips and the legs were too long.
Lucky for me there was the 2nd ZWDO Community Call during which Holly McQuillan explained to me how to change the trousers and gave me tips. (See 00:21:20 in the video below or click here.)
To make the trousers fit properly I cut off some centimeters (cm) from the diagonal part of the legs and by making that part smaller automatically the length is getting shorter also. In my case I cut away 9cm - and hurray the trousers fit!!
I used a cotton white bed sheet to make the real scale version and I used another tie & dye with paint technique to get more white areas in the final print.
If you’re interested in doing the same kind of print, here is the process:
Cut the patterns out of the bed sheets
Make knots in each pieces
Paint the knot from outside
Let them dry for a while
Loosen the knots (when you notice they almost don’t release paint anymore)
Hang the textile and let it dry
Sew the trousers parts. I personally used an elastic waistband for the finishing
And here is the result - I’m happy that I made a pair of trousers that fit well!
Watch this video to learn more about the process:
Follow Anouk on Instagram @anoukvandevisch.
Visit her website at vidavisch.com.