Hello again, This is a new piece that I have just finished which I hope will be going off to an event in Chicago in November. I have submitted it for consideration to the juror and am keeping my fingers and toes crossed that they will like it! It was really interesting to make as I was playing with some new gadgets - different types of 3D printers. I have been reading a lot about them recently and wanted to see what they could do and whether they would be a useful addition to my toolkit. As you can see, you can make some very cool-looking shapes! 3D printers use a filament that is melted and then extruded in layers from a print head to form whatever shape you wish to create. The printing process is done either by a 3D printing machine or more simply, a 3D printing pen. With a machine it is possible to print solid objects, such as a chess piece or a cup,for example. With the right kit incredibly large or complex objects can also be printed, such as prosthetic limbs and a team of researchers from the University of Maine have even printed a boat! You can read more about that here: www.3dnatives.com/en/3d-printed-boat-university-of-maine-161020195/#! Whilst a huge printer that can print a boat would have been fun, I decided to try out somehing a little simpler - a 3D print pen. Toy type pens are fairly cheap if you want to have a try, starting at around £20 or so. What I have discovered that they are very easy to use - but difficult to use well! The filament I chose to use is called PLA, which stands for polylactic acid. PLA is a vegetable-based plastic material, which commonly uses cornstarch as a raw material, so is therefore non-toxic and biodegradable. It comes in the form of wire filament on a spool, which is fed into the pen or printer where it is heated then extruded out of the pen tip / printer head and deposited in a continuously extruded thread. I did a lot of playing about to see how the pen works and after making a lot of blobs and lines I eventually made some small pyramid shaped cages. The PLA is surprisingly strong and it is possible to make pretty much any shapes you can think of, so there is a lot of potential. Using the same pyramid shape I also tried some other more delicate lines and produced another set of cages. The lines of PLA are much finer in this set so placing a fabric pyramid beneath the printed structure makes themmuch more visible. The complimentary colour makes for a very vibrant combination don't you think? From there I continued to add more pyramids and embroidery as you can see below. The luminoscity of the combination of colours I used meant it was easy to name this piece. I also had fun making a short video which shows the finished piece - I hope you enjoy looking at it. I hope you like it too - and maybe even think about trying out some new tools - it can lead to interesting and sometimes surprising results.
Keep well,
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You probably haven't noticed but from today my blog posts are now part of my website. Until now my blog was part of an old website I stopped using about 5 years ago - as my website provider has never been able to transfer it. It didn't really matter until a good friend told me that my blog now has adverts and banners splashed across it - and I really don't want all that junk - so here we are. All my old blog posts going back to 2014 are still at www.clairepassmore.weebly.com/blog, but going forward I will be posting here, at www.clairepassmore.com/blog. More interesting than the whereabouts of my blog I have also been exploring some new ideas for 3 dimensional work. This is how one of the pieces has turned out: It is called 'Deep Dive' and is very different from any of my other work, but I absolutly loved making it! The idea for a quilt about a whale's tail breaking the surface of the ocean has been lingering for a long time, but it took until now for it to be realised. Here is the page from a very old sketchbook, created in about 2015 that started it all off. The whole piece is made in 3 parts: the tail, the swirling water and a net which supports the swirls. Ironically it is barely visible and took the longest to make!)
This is the tail section - made from two layers of dyed stiff non-woven interfacing. A single curved fold helps give the characteritic shape, and lots of French knots and assorted embroidery stitches create the gnarly surface.
This is a close-up of the watery swirls which are made from a variety of different materials: paper, organdie, non-woven fabric and laminated organza. I have spent quite a while exploring how curved creases change the plane of a surface and this is the result. A gorgeous tangle of knots and swirls.
And finally, the net. I have watched fishermen making or repairing nets in the past and they make it look so easy.... guess what.... it isnt!!! This took 4 days of frustrated knotting, unknotting and then reknotting, but thanks to YouTube I got there in the end. The video above is a snapshot from around day 2! As this is a 3D piece it is easiest to get an idea of the whole thing with a video. It has been fun leaning how to make these short videos too. Thanks for reading. <a href="https://www.bloglovin.com/blog/21072771/?claim=b7hede7k62m">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a> |
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