Appliqué pieces loose cut fabrics together to create illustrative/pattern collages. The technique is familiar and personal to me, as it reminds me of my grandmother sewing pillow covers and quilt blankets for us. The beauty in appliqué is perhaps the idea of frugality, yet creating dynamic patterns in the midst of mismatched fabrics.
Materials: Loose cut fabrics, threads, scissors
Cut fabrics to desirable dimensions. Sew them together with a sewing machine.
Felting is a textile material that is formed by condensed fibers pressed together. It is can made from natural fibers like wools and animal furs, or synthetic fibers made out of acrylic. It is highly transformative, where it can processed with colour dyes or compressed into a denser form.
Wet felting
Materials: Wool, hand soap, warm water
Shape wool to desired pattern. Pour warm water just enough to wet the wool. Drip few drops of hand soap and gently rub wool against each other for about half a minute. Rinse to wash the soap off. Leave it to dry.
Hand soap acts as an agent to bind fibers together, while warm water helps to expedite the process. It is suitable for creating flat and dense wool surface.
Needle Felting
Materials: Wool, felt needle, sponge
Ball up wool into a ball. Using sponge as a backing, poke continuously into the ball until fibers are firmly woven.
Vacuum Forming heats and blows up plastic sheet, stretching out the surface before moulded via vacuum air suction. It is commonly used for product packagings and turnpike signs.
Materials: PVC plastic sheet, mold objects
Vacuum machine has to be heated up 20 minutes in advance. Place mold object on the table at the bottom, insert PVC sheet in between the clamps. Pull out heater and wait until PVC warms up to forming temperature (until ripples on surface is gone). Pull up the table and activate vacuum suction. Vacuum edges will look wrinkly if suction is not done quickly.
Thermoplastic fabric is done by boiling organza fabric until it changes into the desired form. This can only be done with 100% polyester fabric (aka organza) that contains polymer, a plastic material that molds at a certain high temperature and solidifies when cooled down.
Materials: 100% polyester organza fabric, rubber bands, aluminium foil, small pieces of objects (marble balls, buttons, wooden balls etc)
Tie small objects into the organza with rubber bands. Alternatively, twist fabric with aluminium foil to create pointy forms.
Dip organza into a pot of water with temperature at 180°C. Boil for 1.5 to 2 hours. Keep in mind to constantly check the water level in case it dries up.
Plastic Fusing melts of strips and pieces of plastics bag together to create a more durable surface. It is commonly used to make totes or wallet for its strong and durable material properties.
Materials: Plastic bags
Since most bags are thin and translucent, a vast variety of patterns and colours can be created. Small holes can be patched up with transparent plastics to build a stronger surface.
Fabric of threads is a method of stitching loose threads together to create a new fabric surface. Great way to reuse leftover threads! It can be molded by stitching them together with water soluble plastic. Place the snitched threads onto a mold and soak in water to dissolve soluble film.
Materials: Loose threads, threads, water soluble film
I washed too much of the soluble plastic away (it is the starch ingredient that molds the threads) so the mold lasted for only 3 days. /sad/ This is still one of my favourite technique as I was able to create perforated surface that has the tactile quality of a fabric.
Transfer printing can be sorted out of three kinds: dry transfer,wet transfer and digital transfer. The transfer of design print onto fabrics in particular is still practiced commercially today for its cheap storage cost (papers!) and fast production line.
Dry Transfer
Materials: Crayons, paper and polyester (or cotton) fabric
Design is drawn on the paper with crayons. To transfer print, press the paper onto fabric using a heated iron. Wait for about 7 seconds for the crayon to melt onto fabric. It can be done repeatedly.
Wet Transfer (Direct and indirect)
Materials: Transprint inks, paintbrushes, polyester fabric and pattern stencils
This transfer is done similar to the dry transfer but using transprint inks. Heat press machine (for polyester set at 200°C, 35s) is used here for a better transfer effect. The high temperature provides a moist condition that helps ink absorption from fabric.
The direct transfer refers to the direct application of ink on design stencil to the paper. In my experiment, I used leaf and furry strings as my stencils. The mix of yellow and blue gave a interesting depth of the pattern.
Indirect transfer is done otherwise, extracting the negative space of the stencil. Inks will be painted fully onto the paper first before placing stencil in between the paper and fabric.
Digital Transfer
Materials: Magic Touch transfer paper, wood or fabric
Design is printed with laser printer using the Touch Print heat transfer paper. The print paper has to be differentiated, depending on the choice of medium being a hard or soft surface.
MagicTouch Transfer Paper TTC 3.1 for textile CPM 6.2 for hard surface
This technique had to be done several times from varying the temperature and duration to get the best result. Heat press on wood has the best result with temperature set to 200°C for 30s.
Overall, I enjoyed the wet transfer using transprint inks most. The colour outcome was most vibrant and organic, characterised with brushstrokes pattern.
