Making a Material

Things you need:

  1. Sewing Machine
  2. Thread
  3. Water Soluble Paper (get this from Chinatown)
  4. Random bits and bobs to throw into the work (preferable sewable material)

How to do it:

  1. Cut a piece of water soluble paper. (it should be twice the size of the final product cause you need to fold it in half.
  2. (Optional) Cut strips of cloth, get some threads, throw onto the paper.
  3. Fold the paper in half.
  4. Pin the work together to prevent the bits from dropping everywhere.
  5. Sew in a criss-cross fashion to hold the bits and bobs.
  6. Wash the entire product in water. (Try not to wash it so much if you want to make it into a shape using a mould later on.)
  7.  Put into a mould of whatever you want to make a shape!

I made a video on how this works!

password: sew

 

My first time using a sewing machine. IT WAS CRAZY. The minute it went “ZBBBBBRRRRZZ” I died. But I manage to learn the bobbin thing, how to change the thread and how to sew different lines, I GOT ADDICTED.

In this method, we learnt how to make a whole new material out of scraps, water soluble cloth and sewing in a criss cross method!

 

I got to use the JUKI, get out VIKING. JUKI is bae.

grr3grr

This one I left it flat…

 

 

I have another one which I tried a mould.

grr4

 

 

Got tired of square designs so I tried a circular style!

20170209_212335

 

This is what the final look like!
( Pictures to be inserted soon 🙂 )

 

REFLECTIONS:
I need more of the water soluble plastics! It is a very easy and fun way to see a new material being made. I foresee this as a good technique to introduce to factories where lots of scraps are being thrown out after every design is made. We can use those scraps and combine then to make tougher material for other things like bags to lampshades.

FINAL SAMPLE:
This method was slightly harder to incorporate into my idea of making pouches because of how many holes there were due to the criss cross nature of the method. How I countered this was to iron the fusing interface at the back of the material which helps to hold the entire structure and act as a inner lining for the pouch. I bought this pouch clasp thing from DAISO which was hard to use at first but at the second try I managed to fix it onto my design.

Author: Diane Lim

ADM | 21 | @common_err (Instagram)

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