Pleats

I am continuing my exploration into making pleats in felt .

I have continued to try stitching , masking tape and foil with mixed success. I abandoned cling film , it's just too delicate for me.

Overall my Sucess has been better using scrim than habotai ( pongee). Mostly I think this has been down too the fact that slightly different methods of felting is called for by the two fabrics, because of their different structures but this is hard to achieve when working everything together.

Here some tasters of my successes and failures close up of one big piece of felt.

Foil pleated prefelted scrim, works quite well

Stitched prefelt into habotai, works wells , but the fabric is not well attached to the pleats.

Stitched prefelt into scrim . Works well , is more controllable than the foil technique , but takes a lot longer to do.

Masking tape pleats on scrim , which is pretty effective and on habotai which is not successful . With the scrim the tape can be used to stick two sides of a pleat together , this does not work with the close woven habotai and so it's impossible to get the same effect. Used in a different way I think the tape would be a good way of making bubbles in the silk , by preventing it attaching to fibres trying to penetrate it.

So mixed effects which is a success as that is what I was trying to achieve.

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