Create xml tree from xPath expression using xslt - xslt

Question

I have a sample source xml like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<shiporder orderid="orderid1">
<item>
item1
</item>
<item>
item2
</item>
</shiporder>
The assumptions for the transformation of my source xml is that I have a list of xPaths in this case /shiporder[1]/item[1] and /shiporder[1]/item[2] and the information that I have to transform the content of those nodes into Customer[1]/adress[1] and Customer[1]/adress[2]. In detail the result should look like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<customer>
<adress>
item1
</adress>
<adress>
item2
</adress>
</customer>
Now I'm looking for a template which applies for each path in my source list ["/shiporder[1]/item"] and transform the inner text of that nodes into nodes with respect to ["Customer[1]/adress"].
First of all I thought to create templates like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:func="http://www.functx.com">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" encoding="UTF-8"/>
<xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>
<xsl:template match="/shiporder[1]">
<Customer>
<xsl:apply-templates select="item"/>
</Customer>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="/shiporder[1]/item">
<adress>
<xsl:value-of select="text()"/>
</adress>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
But later I was thinking about a function which combines the implicit call of the templates in a recursive way. I hope it is clear from here on other wise I could add some pseudo code what kind of function I have in mind.