margaret-cooter: Heat transfer processes

Agenda: fusing (melting) in the morning, heat-setting (pleats etc) in the afternoon.

Examples of fusing laid out on the table, for inspiration

Temperature 150 degrees, for 15 seconds - though this may vary with the materials. My own efforts, using layers of fruit nets (which seemed to have a will of their own) onto plastic bags, and a bit of plasticky fabric -

The afternoon was more to my liking - I had an idea, an intention ... and started off with some paper folding -

then did the folding on various types of (synthetic) fabric, adding squares of dye sublimation paper. Temp 180, frying time 2 minutes (for dark colour); for simply heat setting the folds, about 5 seconds is enough.

It's not easy to get the squares flat and in the right places - the heat makes
the paper curl before it can all be held in place

Too many layers of cloth means that any colour underneath will take longer to transfer

Very sheer fabric = rather sheer coloration

The pieces made with satin were satisfying, and also those with the nastiest fabric, which gave nice crisp folds. I'm thinking of these folds in relation to folds in maps - and the difficulty of refolding the maps "right".

Another little something that has possibilities - this is made with the cheapest organza, simply gathered - and coloured green on one side the first time it was in the press, then loosened, turned over and coloured brown -

It had started out a sort of grey colour -

Dawn's slide show included several artists who use fusing and/or heat setting. As part of her "conductive materials project", Berit Greinke uses plastics with wires running through them - embedded conductive materials (via) -