Purpose

Material Witness will focus on extreme textile process. Images will be posted here showing the history of my work, new work, developing projects and inspiration.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Burning Things

God...I love my job! I just mask up and start the fires.
I love torching polyester. I love poking holes in Tyvek with sharp,burning objects. I love scorching the edges of paper. The end results are satisfying most of the time and there is a new surface to play with that is unpredictable.

I have so many tools to break down and do destruction to fabrics. There is the great heavy heatpresses but my current favourite tool is the tiny point for the new pyrography tool. It can be used for precision burning.

Today I poked tiny holes in Tyvek and smeared it with puff medium and hit it with short blasts of the heatgun. The resulting surface is very complicated and will serve as a top for other layers of fabric.
I buy a softer Tyvek at the Flag Shop and am able to sew and embroider it through the melted surfaces. I can stuggle away with the thicker building tyvek but it is really hard on my machine. Leather needles are required to accomplish anything.

I think I need an angled surface because my arm gets sore after an hour of heat blasting or sewing. I am learning to do a little at a time rather than pump out work at the same pace I did before my masectomy.

The images of these samples will have to be published when I get my camera back.

Maggie Grey has a great post She is an English embroiderer and she does lovely things to Tyvek. Check out www.workshopsontheweb.com

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