Experimental textile material knowledge
2020
This project started with building a material library exploring how the properties of different fibers affect the binding in a textile. The yarns consisted of solely one fiber sort but with different thickness and twist properties. Both knitting and weaving were explored in an experimental way using several techniques within each category.
For knitting, the techniques used were garter stich, stockinette stich and ribbing. For weaving, the techniques used were plain weave, twill weave and satin weave. For each technique 3 natural yarns and 3 synthetic yarns were explored resulting in 36 material samples. An overview of the samples is seen below.
Using the insights gathered from building the material library I started exploring the possibilities of involving non-woven techniques to use yarn left overs and other waste as warp and weft in woven fabrics. Starting by collecting interesting materials in my surroundings as well as mechanically decompose the yarn left overs into fiber ”clusters”. Putting emphasis on only using monomaterials. A selection of the fibers I used can be seen below.
Wanting the result of my process of applying non-woven techniques to the fibers to be monomaterials I did not want to add any additives as binders. I created non-woven looking material samples by solely pressing and/or felting the materials with my hands, adding water in some cases. Throughout the process, the fibers and the results they led to, where constantly evaluated and I made an ongoing selection of which fibers were interesting to continue on with. A selection of the material samples created can be seen below.
In order to be able to experiment with how weaving these new sampels would affect the expression of the materials, I had to scale up the samples. For the cotton fibers, who was harder to felt, some twisting was added. This was not in my original plan but the I really found the sample interesting and wanted to continue on working with it. Below you an see the different results and read my thoughts about scalability of the different fibers.
100% sisal
The sisal acted somewhat like wire which made it possible to form the fibers into larger pieces. Weaving the pieces and trimming the ends unfortunately made the more ”felted” feeling disappear and it more resembled weaving with filament fibers.
100% cotton
The somewhat twisted cotton-pieces had a beautiful look and feel according to me. The problem is the very fragile structure in which will make it impossible to scale.
100% flax
Soaking the flax fibers made it into a pulp with a somewhat pizza doughy texture. The pulp could be stretched into a larger piece and cut into strips. This makes me believe that using left over flax fibers in a similar manner would be scalable without adding any binders. The look was very natural and beautiful and it would be interesting to e.g. add color to the pulp.
100% aloe vera/snake plant
Not knowing exactly what kind of plant these fibers were coming from they ended up creating the most interesting and artistic weave. The color never faded even after the fibers dried and the they were unexpectedly strong and held together. Upscaling this would be highly interesting, maybe not for an industrial production but from a more artistic perspective.
100% wool
Wool is known to be used in felting so it was no surprise that the fibers easily stuck together. This is therefore definitely something I believe is easy to scale but the result here ended up quite dull, not intriguing for me.