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I just found out how much fabric gets wasted when making clothes
Honestly, I was watching a documentary on YouTube about the fashion industry and they said about 15% of the fabric used to make a garment ends up as scraps on the cutting room floor. That's a huge amount when you think about it. They showed a factory making simple t-shirts and the leftover pieces just get thrown away. It made me wonder if there's a better way to design patterns to use more of the material. Has anyone tried designing with zero-waste patterns? I'd love to see some examples of how that actually works.
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foster.mary7mo ago
Oh wow, that 15% number is actually low from what I've read... it can get way worse with more complex clothes. I saw a breakdown for a suit jacket once where almost 30% of the fabric was scrap. The zero-waste pattern thing is real though, it's like a big puzzle where all the pieces have to fit together with no gaps. It makes the clothes look kind of boxy sometimes, which is probably why it's not the norm.
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elliot_murray7mo ago
Man, that's wild. I mean, you see it everywhere once you start looking. I was cleaning this old patio set last week and the amount of perfectly good stuff people just toss out is crazy. It feels like the whole system is built to waste stuff, not just fabric.
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