Monday, December 22, 2008

FAUX QUILT



I have been experimenting with the weaving grid and have come up with a kind of faux origami quilt.

I began by making the subsections and then connected them into long strips. Then I began weaving and twisting.



It was not long before I became hopelessly tangled and twisted. The solution was to remove all the dangling bits which were not necessary for the next step. This is making it easier.



In general, twisting the pieces together is not easy. The paper (cheap 20lb copy paper)is too bulky and not strong enough to cope with a lot of folding and upfolding. Some of it is getting a little thin. Very little of it is ending up with the same crisp folds with which I began the project. Some units are definitely a little crumpled around the edges.



I have been utilizing mini "dog clips" to clamp selected folds together while I arrange the folds prior to twisting. The clips work well but my arthritic hands find them difficult to squeeze and un-squeeze.

I think the piece would benefit from thinner prettier and sturdier paper. At the moment it suffers from the constraints of cost as well as the usual pitfalls of developing a new model and method of folding.

This is definitely not a fast method of paper connection. The benefit is that the intrepid (and arguably insane) folder can end up with a multi-colored flat piece of decorative origami of theoretically endless dimensions. As with any kind of quilting or pieced work, patterns and "pixel art" can be worked into the decorative sheet: all it takes is a little planning.

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