OUr Values
I make clothes for expressive individuals who enjoy art and design as well as the benefits of purchasing clothes that are ethically sewn, with materials sourced sustainably, that support the growth of new other forms fair fashion.
Artistic
Patch + Piece collections are made in small batches of one of a kinds, the way a painter would create a new body of work. While there are always consistent themes and ideas in each batch, every item is one of a kind. No one else is going to have your unique item.
Working in small collections as opposed to fashion “seasons” keeps thing interesting, so our designs evolve, improve, and adapt to what works best for our clients, while also allowing us to experiment with new imagery, color blocking, and text.
We love receiving emails and hearing the stories of our clients who get stopped in the street and asked about their Patch + Piece garments. We hope you share your story with us, by following and tagging us @patchandpiece on instagram.
Sustainable
With the understanding that our clothing industry is in an environmental and labor crisis, we wanted to make clothes that you could feel good about purchasing and wearing in your every day life.
Patch + Piece is designed and sewn in our small studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. As the designer, I work to carefully analyze how much inventory we really need, working through a model of sewing the clothes that doesn’t over extend the capacities of my own personal labor. We test in local markets, seeing the clothing on our customers, in order to ensure a good fit, as well as eliminating design errors and minimizing how much we need to make.
At the end of the season, if an item hasn’t sold it is remade into a new piece for next year. This honors the materials that were used and the labor it took to make the original garment. It to be continually redesigned until it finds the person meant for it.
REcycle
Patch + Piece garments incorporate cloth that would normally go to waste. Growing up on a farm in Iowa, I learned how to be resourceful and respect the materials I have on hand. Textiles is the second largest global pollutant affecting the earth today. With this project, we wanted to provide some sort of alternative to current methods of sourcing.
I’m a sewing teacher, so I know how much waste just one garment produces. Luckily, my students often give me their unwanted scraps, and I save them for Patch + Piece garments.
I also recycle. When I thrift, I’m blown away by how much like new cloth is discarded. This recycling often becomes a fun part of the Patch + Piece aesthetic, allowing the old graphic design or pattern and print to be reconsidered in a new context.
I’ll also look for designer deadstock. This is the extra fabric that is left after the end of a production run. This left over fabric is sometimes sold, but often goes to waste.
why it’s made with this process:
This spring, I gave a TedX talk explaining research I started 10 + years ago into our relationship with clothing and how it is affected by our mass production process. This information was relevant 10 years ago when I started this path of understanding ready to wear clothing, and it’s even more relevant today in our current climate and environmental conversation around clothing. The 3 premises I discuss in my talk inform my business, my design practice and my personal daily wear.
How it’s made
As a sewing teacher, design educator, and owner of Fair Fit Studio, I developed unconventional patterns that teach people about fit for their unique shape as well as artistic sewing methods. In an attempt to develop a knitwear pattern, I stumbled upon the pattern and construction for Patch + Piece.
The Patch + Piece pattern incorporates all of my knowledge of fit, proportion, and comfort that I’ve learned in my 10 + years of experience teaching people how to make their own clothing. The parts of the pattern overlap to create a great fit, while also giving structure to knitwear that doesn’t normally exist. The sewing methods used are my own personal techniques that I’ve created over the span of my artistic practice. I also create different style lines and proportions with the intention of creating variations of fit for more people.
Often, our garments are printed in collaboration between my husbands graffiti art and my own color compositions. He draws and paints a lot of the imagery which I translate into our own unique textile designs.
