Case study: Moiré Drops — 3D printing on organza (Fabricademy 2022–23)

By Anastasia Pistofidou · Updated 2026-09-11 · 2 min read

case study TPU organza 3D printing on textiles FDM

Most 3D printed fashion fails on the same detail: the printed part and the cloth never really become one material. This Fabricademy final project solved it with organza, TPU and a lot of hand stitching — and, unusually, published its numbers.

Moiré Drops

Fabric: organza, blue and white. Filaments: TPU for the white base, PLA for the blue base. Printer: AnyCubic, FDM. Pieces: 60, front and back. Printing: 18 minutes for each smaller piece, 2 hours 17 minutes for each larger one. Hand stitching: 12 hours front and back.

The result is a droplet-inspired look built from many small printed elements on a very light fabric, so the piece can move. Printing many small parts instead of one large panel is what keeps the organza in charge of the drape — that is the design decision worth copying.

A single Moiré Drops element: blue printed lines on fine white mesh, held in a hand — One element of the 60: blue lines printed onto fine white mesh, held in the hand.

Moiré Drops printed organza — Moiré Drops — organza (blue and white), TPU for the white base, PLA for the blue base, printed on an AnyCubic FDM printer.

Shimoiré

Fabric: organza. Filament: TPU. Pieces: 16 front and back. Printing: 32 minutes for each piece. A second, denser geometry on the same fabric, used to compare how the printed pattern interacts with the weave when the piece is worn.

Shimoiré printed organza garment — Shimoiré — same fabric, denser geometry: 16 pieces front and back, 32 minutes each.

RED REEF

Fabric: organza and mesh. Filament: TPU. Pieces: 28 front and back. Printing: 1 hour 43 minutes. Hand stitching: 10 hours front and back.

RED REEF is where mesh shrinkage had to be designed around: a stretched mesh pulls back after printing, so the geometry has to account for the fabric returning to its own tension.

RED REEF: TPU printed on organza and mesh — RED REEF — organza and mesh, TPU, mesh shrinkage taken into account.

The finished printed look, a garment of concentric printed lines, after 365 hours of work — The final look — the total for the project: 365 hours of printing, assembling and stitching.

Technical development: expanded lines

Alongside the garments, the project developed a family of test pieces — expanded lines — printing TPU onto mesh and lycra to compare how the same line geometry behaves on different substrates.

Expanded lines: TPU printed on mesh and lycra test pieces — Expanded lines — TPU on mesh and lycra, the test series behind the garments.

Expanded lines technical development pieces — Expanded lines — technical development, Fabricademy 2022–23.

What to take from it

Small printed elements on a light fabric give drape; large panels give armour.
TPU on organza or mesh is a workable, low-cost combination on an FDM printer.
Every figure here came from a real project, so it can be planned against: if the small pieces take 18 minutes and the large ones 2 hours 17, a 60-piece garment is a known quantity of machine time before you start.
Publish the numbers. Print hours per piece and stitching hours are the most useful thing one designer can leave for the next.

Project: Dinesh Kumar, Fabricademy final project 2022–23 — Moiré Drops. Technical data and images from the Fabricademy Week 7 class "Computational Couture" by Anastasia Pistofidou.

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