Steve bought me this great book for me a month or so ago (an early Christmas present). Hot Textiles by Kim Thittachai is a phenomenal exploration in the use of your heat gun to create works of art in textiles.
Here is a recently created work, Remnants, that used Thittachai’s technique of painted fusible web distressed with heat. The background fabric is a hand dyed and burnt out silk.
- Remnants ©Ann Flaherty 2008
For another experiment, Blaze, I used the inside of a Fedex envelope. Painted with water based red and yellow paints, I then blasted it with my heat gun creating a dimensional synthetic cloth that can be easily stitched.
If you are not up for making your grandmother’s quilt, and love to experiment with the use of alternative items in
Blaze ©Ann Flaherty 2008
your work , such as Tyvek, vegetable mesh, synthetics, paints, dyes, seeds and so much more, Hot Textiles provides understandable instructions that beg you to try more. Here are a set of skills that you can incorporate in other techniques. Buy this book and set a play date soon!
One caution: because of the use of heat on a variety of materials, you will need a well ventilated area.
Ann Flaherty's Strands of Imagination 