Dippy chimneypots, week 3

These have been stitched over the past week -

They have a new hanging system - the threads are tidily held by little squares of card (mountboard) with nicks in the corners, rather than spread over a wad of crumpled newspaper. Here they are, mostly threaded up - 

The pots dipped last week were bone dry, with some alarming cracks. In fact I'm about to conclude that the bamboo leaves (crumbling on the board) Just Don't Work - after all, aren't some plant fibres meant to resist water? If paper - my first dipping trial - is at the soggy end of the spectrum, bamboo leaves are right at the other end.

And here's what came out of the kiln! Clunky and boring, mostly - where's the translucency? But they do have a smoothness that "feels like fabric" -

Only one item contained metallic fabric -

"white ladies"

But at least the glass beads worked - sort of. This was a gathered bit of wool with beads in the folds. Removing the clay that covered the beads definitely made a difference - little puddles of glass formed, whereas the other beads often stayed buried -

A few pots were dipped this week, drying ... and hopefully not cracking too much -

I had trekked out to Tottenham to get a tub of casting slip of my own - to avoid the problems of the college running out of it, and to have more control over the consistency and drying. Dipping at home makes it possible to add bases, as I can adjust the height of the hanging system to support the chimneys/tubes to keep them straight until they can support themselves.

This project has a certain amount of engineering challenge in it. Which adds its own interest.