It seems as if I am back in the swing of things. A couple of days ago I finished what seems to be my first “placemat”. The inverted comers are there because it doesn’t look like a place mat I would use, and might still be in the realm of classroom crafts. When I complained to R about it he said “well, what do you expect, its not as if you were born twining, learning new things takes time” and I guess he was right.
Learning new skills and techniques take time. This is my second attempt at twining with newspapers, or twining in general. Last time I tried, I found out how important it was for the newspaper sticks to be totally straight. I also thought it would be better to start twining in the middle of the piece by folding a stick in half an alternately going to the left and then to the right.
I think this could be used to create interesting textures, if you alternate the spoke you start on, potentially zigzagging across the piece making interesting textures. I might try that somewhere down the road.
The next piece I try I will work from one end to the other and see if I can make everything square out a bit more.
Even though I measured equal distances for my stakes, somehow, while working, they didn’t stay parallel, especially the external ones, and I started getting a trapeze shaped piece instead of a rectangular one.
This would usually be enough to send me running away, screaming and pulling my hair out, but as R said, learning is a process, and funky shaped pieces is part of that.
After I saw things were getting a bit out of shape I decided to do a “keeper line”, kind of a boarder that would go around my piece and catch the ends of the twining at the end of each row. In that way, I thought, I could also stop the stakes from moving sideways and widening the trapeze. It did help a bit.
One think is for sure, on the next piece I make, I will make sure to slide my ruler down as I work and keep squaring out the distances between the stakes. Wobbly and crooked is ok if that is what you want, but it wasn’t what I wanted at all in this case.
Finishing the piece is something I haven’t quite worked out yet. I weaved the stakes back into the plastic I twined around, and it doesn’t look to bad. If there wasn’t a color difference, then it would have been perfect. I am not too happy with then ends of the cross twines.
All I did was chop them off at the ends, after twinning them together with the yellow plastic bags. I thought that the best thing to do in this case would be to sew on a heavy fabric boarder. I will try that in the future, but currently lack both a working sewing machine and heavy fabric.
I still have to try and coat it with polyurethane to waterproof it, something I am not looking forward to.
If anyone has any experience with this technique I would love to get some pointers!
Tags: crafts, newspaper, newspaper sticks, placemat, plastic bags, recycled, twining