Fusing Fabric Fun

Well, as promised in my last post, I did have an afternoon practically to myself and did spend a few hours doing some exploring with some new textile techniques, in this case, Fusing Fabric with a soldering iron. This was only a year overdue, as I had treated myself to an interesting book by Margaret_Beal a while ago and had even invested in the soldering iron she recommended, but ran out of time. Today, I made a start in a tentative way. Nothing planned, or finished, just some experiments and samples for my sketch book. This is the amazing soldering iron which can be used like a pen and which fuses layers of fabric together with heat, and will even burn patterns into the fabric like stitch lines.

And this is my once tidy desk with everything pulled out to make my tiny samples. ( I have managed to tidy it up though which is a first. I think I'm finally growing up!)

Apologies for the poor photo, but it was a dull and rainy afternoon and the light was bad. This was the culmination of the afternoon's work - not anything to be proud of or even worth showing here - but it's here just to prove that I had been working. The interesting thing is that all the fabrics are fused together, not stitched, glued or bonded and the technique is open to experiment. There is a long long way to go yet, but there are some seeds of ideas beginning to grow.

Finally, page one of my sketch book which records some experiments I played around with, working on different backgrounds.

Anyway, I'm indebted to Margaret Beal for her inspiring book, and I will spend more time getting to grips with the technique and making it work for me.

Just don't expect anything soon!