The Nani Project 1.0 and its iterations
If Nani began with a question about what to do with materials that had already been discarded, the next question was much more practical: how do you actually transform them into something useful?
My immediate instinct was to turn the fabric scraps into yarn. I have been knitting for years, so yarn is one of the most intuitive textile forms for me to think through. When I look at a piece of fabric, I naturally start thinking about how it could be cut, twisted, joined or transformed into something I could work with. For Nani, this instinct became the starting point for exploring how textile waste could be transformed into a new material for making.
The first idea was simple. Cut the scraps into strips, turn them into a new yarn, and then use that yarn to make something else. It felt like a natural way of extending the life of the material without trying to hide where it came from. The scraps could retain their colours, textures and irregularities while taking on a completely new form.
Before settling on a final material, however, I wanted to understand what these discarded materials were capable of. Nani 1.0 therefore became an exercise in material experimentation. I explored different techniques and combinations, using fabric, polythene, wrappers and conventional textile threads to understand how each material behaved and how they could work together.
One of the first directions explored was loom weaving with thread and polythene. The discarded polythene was incorporated alongside conventional thread on a loom, giving the lightweight plastic a more structured form. This created an interesting contrast between the regularity of the woven structure and the visual and tactile qualities of the plastic.
The next exploration moved into knitting, which felt like a natural progression from my initial idea of creating a waste-derived yarn. A yarn made from fabric and polythene was worked through a conventional knitting technique. This changed the role of the waste material. Instead of simply being inserted into an existing textile structure, it became the structure itself. The irregularity of the fabric scraps and the stiffness of the polythene created a highly textured surface.
Another direction returned to loom weaving, this time using fabric scraps alongside discarded wrappers. The wrappers introduced another kind of post-consumer material into the process. Their colours, printed surfaces and reflective qualities became part of the textile rather than being hidden.
I also explored crochet using a yarn made from fabric and polythene. Crochet allowed the material to behave differently once again, creating a more dimensional and heavily textured surface. Each technique revealed something different about the material, and each sample helped me understand what the final direction could be.
Through these experiments, I began to realise that the question was not simply which technique produced the most interesting result. It was about finding the process that allowed the material itself to remain at the centre of the design.
The samples became a way of evaluating the material through making. How does the yarn behave when knitted? How does the polythene affect its structure? How much irregularity can the material accommodate? What happens when the fabric scraps remain visibly identifiable? Which technique allows the discarded material to retain its character rather than making it look like a conventional textile?
Eventually, the direction that felt most successful was the knitted material made from fabric and polythene yarn. The combination produced a surface that was tactile, irregular and visually expressive, while still retaining a clear connection to the materials it had been made from. This became the final material for Nani 1.0.
The resulting textile is almost a record of the process itself. Individual fabric scraps remain visible, compressed into a new structure alongside fragments of polythene. Different colours and textures sit next to one another, while loose fibres and irregular edges remain part of the surface. Rather than attempting to create a perfectly uniform textile, the final material embraces the unpredictability that comes with working with waste.
This was important to me because I did not want the final material to conceal its previous life. The waste needed to remain legible. The small pieces of fabric are evidence of what the material was before, while the polythene running through the yarn points towards another waste stream that was brought into the project.
In that sense, the final material became more than simply a new textile. It became a physical documentation of the experimentation that led to it.
The process of arriving at it was not linear. It began with something familiar to me, making yarn because I am a knitter, and expanded into a series of experiments with weaving, knitting and crochet. Some directions were promising, while others helped me understand what did not work. Every sample contributed something to the final material.
This iterative process became one of the most valuable parts of Nani 1.0. Rather than approaching waste with a predetermined solution, I had to let the material participate in the design process. Its limitations became parameters, its irregularities became characteristics, and its unexpected behaviour became information.
Ultimately, Nani 1.0 was not about finding a way to make waste disappear. It was about making it visible in a new form.
The final material carries its past with it. Fabric that had already been used, polythene that had already been discarded, and hours of experimentation were brought together to create something with another potential life.
The material came first. The object came later. The design was a series of happy accidents.
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