Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Manipulating Fabric Again

I've been working on finishing the quilt I made with the manipulated-Frankenfabric last year, it is turning out really great, (I'd show it to you but I am entering it into a show) and so I have have been wanting to try the technique again. But I don't have much polyester, absolutely no clothing (bleah, I just hate wearing it) and not much in the way of yardage in my stash. Polyester is the only fabric that the shapes will stay in permanently, so that's what I have to find.

So I had to do a brief search for a few more polyester skirts to deconstruct and manipulate into new and more interesting shapes, so off I went to the local Goodwill. These three pieces of clothing will be taken apart, and put through the process I described in this post last year, the green is a polyester skirt with a polyester lining and the floral is a polyester skirt with a brown polyester lining, the black/white one is actually a very large polyester tunic. All together they cost $11.

The last (and only) time I tried this fabric manipulation technique, the polyester was just a solid ivory/beige, so it will be interesting to see how the patterned fabrics look once they've been shaped into a 2D form with 3D shapes. I'm guessing that the strongly patterned black/white one will be hard to see the shapes in, but who knows. That's the fun of this manipulating fabric technique isn't it? I am planning to use a variety of objects this time, instead of just marbles of various sizes.

The rubber-banding process will be a good exercise for my right-hand to undertake. I'm slowly working towards getting strength and dexterity back up to my usual levels. A lot of movement and gripping still really tires my hand out, so I'm doing this in small batches as I catch up on the last few episodes of LOST before the new season starts.

1 comment:

Deborah said...

Fascinating technique!