By looking at Patricia Mayberry's designs, you'd never know that she's been sewing less than a year.

"I've always wanted to design," she said. "But I didn't know how to sew."

Greg Eans/The Daily Reflector (ENLARGE)

East Carolina University senior Patricia Mayberry, 22, is wearing her own design, a polo shirt from hew new clothing line called 'Jerri Lee.' Included in the line will be polos, pajamas and hand bags.

Her grandmother sews, she said, but would never show her how to use a machine.

Mayberry received a sewing machine as a gift and then began to teach herself how to use it, in addition to taking a college class in garment construction at East Carolina University.

Since last August, Mayberry, a senior from High Point, has graduated from using patterns to sew garments to not using a pattern at all — a skill that some dressmakers never acquire.

She says it just sort of makes sense to her.

But it's not only Mayberry's fine tailoring skills that are remarkable; it's her choice of material that makes her work really one-of-a-kind. She uses take-out bags, newspaper and gum wrappers — definitely nontraditional materials.

Her venture into using food wrappers and bags as fabric came out of necessity.

Mayberry was broke.

"Other students in my class were using silk and organza and all these expensive materials," she said. "I didn't have that kind of money. I needed to use something cheap."

An ECU fine art student in textiles, Mayberry was in Christine Zoeller's garment construction class at the time.

The assignment was simple: Select a dress pattern and construct it.

"I thought to myself, 'Wouldn't it be cool if I did a dress out of McDonald's bags?'" Mayberry said. "It was my way of getting around a boring assignment."

She approached the manager at McDonald's and told them what she wanted to do. The restaurant provided Mayberry with enough take-out bags to create, "Lovin It Too Much," a shift dress, hat and jacket.

"I was only required to make a dress, but I did a whole ensemble," Mayberry said.

Professor Christine Zoeller said in Mayberry's class that one day textile fashion is not going to be about fabric.

And that got Mayberry thinking, "How far could I push it?"

"I like the mental challenge," she said. "I have a tendency to get bored."

Mayberry is currently working on a collection of 12 dresses, all using nontraditional materials, for her bachelor's of fine art senior project.

So far, she's completed four dresses and is working on a fifth.

But don't ask her what the dress will look like, because she won't tell you.

"I really like the surprise element," she said while working at her part-time job at Mudslinger's Coffee Company.

She did divulge, however, that she's working on a dress that is supposed to function as an umbrella.

Mayberry's sensitive to utilitarian aspect of her designs; she wants to be sure her garments can actually be worn as clothing.

She's completed dresses that used Krispy Kreme bags, The Daily Reflector newspaper and Double Bubble gum wrappers — as fabric.

Each dress takes about three weeks to sew but there are weeks of preparation prior to even turning on her sewing machine.

The Krispy Kreme dress, for example, is made of doughnut bags that Mayberry had to cut open. She spent weeks carrying around the bags.

"I took them everywhere," she said. "to work, to class. I would cut them up as I had time."

Since she designs first, Mayberry doesn't always consider how long it will take to actually make the dresses. She doesn't like to change the design once she has it on paper.

"Oh, I'll be be mad at myself while I'm doing it," Mayberry said with a laugh. "But I want it to be the way it looks in the design."

Surprisingly, she really didn't like the Krispy Kreme dress while she was making it but it's since become her favorite.

"It's one of those pieces that have to be on," Mayberry said.

The dress has received the attention of Krispy Kreme's head office in Winston-Salem. They want to do an interview with Mayberry.

She's also sent photos of the McDonald's ensemble to a casting call asking for customer input, but she won't know anything until August.

While her first dress incurred minimal cost, with each subsequent dress, Mayberry's expenses have increased. She figures they now cost her about $300 each to create, and that does not account for the hours of preparation time.

For the "Bubblicious" dress — made of individual Double Bubble gum wrappers and tulle — Mayberry had to purchase five large Sam's Club tubs and eight bags of the gum to make the jacket, as well having to buy the tulle and bias tape, which edges the 26-layer skirt. The skirt's materials alone cost Mayberry $225.

The gum wrappers, although not expensive, required a great deal of labor.

"My boyfriend and I unwrapped the gum every night," she said. "And if the wrapper ripped, I couldn't use it."

Mayberry has no idea how many wrappers she used, but it was, "a big Olive Garden take-out bag full."

To create the fabric to make the jacket, Mayberry overlapped the individual 3 1/4-by-2 1/2-inch wrappers and then did a free-hand embroidery to sew all the pieces together.

Mayberry does not treat the paper in her garments in any way for durability, so she kept the leftover wrappers and bags in case she needs to make repairs.

The gum from the Double Bubble wrappers, however, went in the garbage.

"I just kept chewing it," Mayberry said. "It had to go. Now I have to go to the dentist."

In Mayberry's limited spare time, she has managed to create a line of polo shirts, pajamas and handbags.

Jerri Lee is the name of her planned mainstream company; she hopes to launch it by the end of the summer.

"The fabric is being made in California right now," she said.

The company is named for her grandfather, who passed away in 1991, and her uncle, Jerri Junior, who died just last year.

"We were real close," Mayberry said about her grandfather. "I wanted to do something in memory of him."

The polo's sport a JL detail on the front and an embroidered Jerri Lee on the back of the collar, a small detail that sets her shirts apart from the mainstream.

"I am all about funky," she said.

Contact Kelley Kirk-Swindell at 329-9596 or kkirkswindell@coxnc.com.