MMT2:1 Joining

I have decided, some in advance and some whilst working, to use the following joining methods: zigzag stitch on the sewing machine, running stitch/ straight stitch, staples, safety pins, tape, herringbone stitch. Some of these methods were more succesful than others. I selected the following materials: felt, zipper tape, plastic, balsa wood, paper, wallpaper, lace and cardboard. Again some were great to work with and others were very difficult.

Exercise 1: Joining straight flush edges

With some materials it was surprisingly difficult to make the join neat without the pieces drifting away from each other especially when using a method like using a sewing machine or even stapling. I found the zigzag on the sewing machine one of the most visually appealing , the regularity and solidity, things are really joined with this method. Other methods such as the herringbone stitch, being hand sewn, were less regular and less secure and more suited to joining with a gap. It made me think about how rarely we actually neatly but things up edge to edge to join them. With methods like tape you can create a nice hinge whihc can be very useful but with solid methods like stapling it would make a lot more sense to overlap edges to make it easier to join.

Exercise 2: Joining straight edges with a gap

Joining with a gap was harder than I thought it would be, especially keeping the gap consistent, cellotape being really the only method that allowed me to easily do so. Leaving a gap makes for a very flexible join, useful for making a hinge, but it doesn’t make a very strong join.

2b explore changing the distance of the gap

Joining with a gap that got bigger or smaller was surprisingly fun, and made for some dynamic joins. Most methods were suitable for this and the pieces were dynamic and interesting. Not very stable though so aesthetically pleasing rather than useful!

Exercise 3: Joining curved edges

a: curved edges that fit neatly together

The way to create matching curves was to line up the materials cut through them both at the same time. I very much enjoyed joining them and creating a piece that had such a dynamic join! I especially like the join with the plastic as you can see the back of the join through the plastic. I feel these pieces were all pretty succesful.

b: curved edges that create a gap

I created the curves in the same way as before but had to choose my joining methods more carefully. Tape was the easiest to make a gap with, the most stable, but also the least exciting (although it is nice when you hold it against the light and the two pieces appear to be magically linked). Both sewing and stapling make for an exciting, flexible join, with the pieces still being able to move in relation to each other.

c: curved edges that both touch and leave a gap

I feel I got more and more into the flow of creating exciting joins as I got further into this assignment. I liked the angles and overlaps and gaps in this experiment and really enjoyed layering different materials and using different methods. I felt this was the method perhaps where cellotape really came into its own. allowing each piece to overlap, abut or sit away from the other with an unobstrusive join. But layering different colours plastic and using a very rough running stitch also felt succesful, and the cardboard joined with a zigzag stitch is probably my very favourite piece. I enjoyed exploring joining methods that really changed the texture and ones that didn’t at all.

d: then cut shapes out of the material to form holes that can be filled with another material using a joining method to keep them in place

Exercise 4: overlapping edges

Overlapping edges make for much sturdier joins and if at least one of the materials is relatively opaque makes for a very exciting method too. I explored both very obvious methods suh a safety pins and gold embroidery thread and less invasive ones such as a straight stitch on the sewing mahine. I personally felt the pieces where both materials could be glimpsed and where the joining methods really shouted at you were the best pieces.

Exercise 5: Forming corners and angles

This experiment really saw me hitting my stride, and I especially like the piece to the left with the many staples and the two pieces of plastic, but alsmost all the pieces were exciting, the interaction between the materials and the methods really working well from an aesthetic point of view.

Final part

I have these fluffy seeds on a dried artichoke flower in my work room. Occasionaly one floats down and lands on my work table. This one just demanded to be stapled into a hole I had cut in a small wallpaper sample. I love the contrast of the delicate seed with its fragile tentacles, and the brutal staples holding it in place. The way I have turned up the contrast on the photo means the fine hairs of the seed really stand out against the light back ground. I like the idea of filling holes in a solid material, maybe a wall of steel, with fluffy pompoms!

I took two pleated bits of paper and tried stitching them together. I had visions of the ridges nestling together creating a new textured piece but they actually almost canceled each other out! Also the technique I chose for joining wasn’t very succesful as the tension I needed to put on the thread to pull the bit of paper together meant it actually ripped through the paper. It would need a different material, one that holds its shape but doesn’t tear when joined. I guess I could have used glue, but as I hadn’t used this in my previous experiments I wasn't sure if this was inappropriate.

Next I joined two pices of fabric I had smocked for Part 1, and joined these with a paper piece also from part 1, it became quite a 3D shape! I am not 100% it worked, it doesn’t have much of a dynamic about it actually.

I used one the my very early samples of two pieces of water colour paper zigzagged together, and used this to print with. I had hoped the water colour would leak through the stitch holes but it didn’t work out that neatly. Until the paper was soaked in paint, which opened the holes up more, it didn’t let the paint through at all, and after that it let it through in blobs at times. But actually I do like the patterns it created.

I then tried a similar method of printing with painted samples, and I quite like the result although I feel it isn’t hugely exciting. A drier paint or one with more pigment and on a background that wasn’t white would have probably been more exciting! I did use this paper for my next piece though,

I had ideas of suspension wires, of the stitches holding shapes in the cut out spaces being made rigid, and shapes floating above or underneath the surface of the material they were attached to, to create an exciting 3D shape. I looked at suspension bridges and got all excited and tried to lift my shapes away from the paper. I used wire for this. I had hoped for more drama, and will try to replicate this on a much larger scale, but for a first experiment it wasn’t bad.

For the next experiment I used thread and a circle of balsa wood to let it dangle underneath the paper. I wanted it to move in the breeze, to not be rigid in relation to the surface it was attached to. I thought parachutes, hammocks, trampolines…

I had a fun time playing repeating photographs or parts of photographs I had taken of my experiments. I know that isn’t entirely what was meant by multiples of the techniques, but I just felt there was a great graphic feel to some of the patterns created that I wanted to include them anyway. I could see some of these as textile prints, especially when scaled down further to make the original photo less distinct and more abstract.

This is just a quick mock up of it functioning as a print pattern, sorry I drew it on my phone and it is extremely unsophisticated!

Evaluation and sorting

I found cellotape useful for its speed, its ease, and for not distracting too much from the original material, but it was also the least exciting method. I used some stickers which served the same purpose but added a colourful element to the join that cellotape didn’t. Overall I loved the joining methods that weren’t an obvious choice for the materials, staples and lace, plastic and zigzagging, for example, to take it from utilitarian to art. Likewise for using the wrong scale, huge thick threads for joining bits of paper for example. These pieces felt dynamic and exciting. Often joining two different materials increased the liveliness of the experiment too. Most of the experiments ended up being 2D, I did experiment with 3D joining at the end, with some variable succes. I did not shy away from using colour and I found this to be a big part of the dynamic of the pieces.

I liked the pieces where the joined materials increased the value of the overall piece, because of their interaction or contrast. Wallpaper and lace stapled together was a much more successful/ fun join than two pieces of paper taped together! A curved carboard join with the ridges at different angles was much more exciting than a felt and paper straight join. The pieces I selected to submit were ones were the joins, materials and colours really jumped out.