These garments won't resemble plumage or lawns. Rather, the feathers and fibers will get transformed into fabrics resembling wool, linen, or cotton. Researchers hope these inventions, made from the farming industry's castoffs, could help reduce the use of petroleum-based synthetic fabrics such as Polyester.

"All those wastes don't have to be wasted anymore," researcher textile scientist Yiqi Yang at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln told LiveScience.

World consumption of natural and synthetic fibers amounts to 67 million tons annually, which are used not just in clothing, but in carpets, vehicles, construction materials and a host of other everyday applications. Satisfying the increasing global demand for fibers could prove challenging in the near future, the scientists explained, because of the limited availability of cultivable land, as well as the increasing price and decreasing availability of petroleum.

Source: LiveScience