Certificate Module 5 Chapter 4: Fabric Investigations

On looking back my records, I was shocked to discover that it is quite a few months since I last posted any Distant Stitch work on my blog.  My husband's increasing health problems have meant that more and more, my role has slipped into that of carer.  It has involved getting my head around a change of role for us both, with my husband in the past having been the strong one and me doing most of the leaning.  Forty years of loving affection and a shared sense of humour has helped us gradually negotiate this change and find ways of adapting to it.  In my case it has involved tackling more vigorously my weakness in how I plan my time.  Domestic chores expand to fill whatever time is available and day after day, I intended to have some studio time "..as soon as I have finished ..." only to find myself at midnight, exhausted and resentful.  A change of approach was needed.  Moray's memory problems actually presented the answer.  I started producing timetables for each day, so that he would know the day and date and what was happening.  It gave me the idea to use the timetables to help myself instead, so that instead of trying to do, say, all the ironing, I would decide to iron for an hour.  It was just one more step to timetable a precious hour and a half in my studio most days after lunch, when Moray was happily reading or watching sport on TV.  Some of these times are spent just reading a magazine or discovering the joys of Netflix on my laptop, but gradually, as I relaxed and the stress started to ease, I started thinking about Distant Stitch again, started collecting up some fabrics and I was off ...

I searched my fabric stash, my kitchen and the ironing basket to find a selection of different undyed fabrics.  I tried to get both natural and synthetic fabrics, lightweight to heavyweight and woven, non-woven and knit fabrics.  Below is a picture of my collection of fabrics.

5.4.1  Fabric collection

I chose a smaller collection of eight different fabrics to do some detailed studies.  They were (1) Pelmet Vilene, (2) a lightweight, non-woven synthetic fabric which had been used as packaging in a parcel I received, (3) polyester chiffon, (4) a synthetic knit from a mattress cover which I abandoned as being rather unpleasant to sleep on, (5) some alpaca quilt wadding left over from a quilt I had made for my great-nephew, (6) part of a new cotton dishcloth, (7) some cotton calico and (8) a piece of silk dupion.  Below is a table showing the various investigations and their results.

	Pelmet Vilene	Lightweight non-woven synthetic packaging	Polyester chiffon	Synthetic knit mattress cover	Non-woven alpaca waddding	Cotton knit dishcloth	Cotton calico	Silk dupion
Crumple test	Hard to squeeze but creases easily	Appears to crease easily but creases fall out almost immediately	Does not crease	Does not crease	Creases easily but smooths out easily again	No creases	Creases  easily	Creases to some extent
Stretch on straight?	No	Stretches more easily in one direction than the other	No	Stretches in length but not in width	Stretches in every direction but it tends to damage the structure	Yes	No	No
Stretch on bias?	No	Yes, slightly	No	Yes		Yes	Yes	Yes
Fray on straight?	No -  hard to distress edges manually	No	Yes, very easily	No	Will not fray but edges easily distressed with just the fingers	Does not fray but will unravel completely if the right thread is pulled	Yes, easily	Yes, very easily
Fray on bias?	No – hard to distress edges manually	No – for all its apparent fragility it is hard to distress the edges	Yes, very easily	No			Hard to fray on bias	Hard to fray on bias
Melt edge	Caught fire easily.  Black/brown melted edge	Shrank away from flames, melted and curled up	Shrank from flame, melted and distorted with hard plastic edge	Melted and caught fire leaving black plastic edge	Caught fire easily and hard to extinguish! Had to hold it under the water.  Black edges with black powdery residue	Caught fire – brown edges with crumbly residue	Caught fire easily, black/brown edges with crumbly residue	Hard to set alight but then suddenly flares.  Beautiful golden brown singed edges with black crumbly residue
Melt centre	Singed and eventually caught fire – no hole	Shrank away from heat, melted into a hole with plastic edges	Melted into a small lens shaped hole	Melted into a hole and shrank, distorting fabric	Singed and caught fire.	Singed, leaving a hole	Did not catch fire and no hole but resulting scorched fabric had much weaker structure	Singed leaving a hole – singed fabric weakened and tore along its length

There were some surprises, or more accurately, shocks when I discovered that both the mattress cover fabric and the quilt wadding caught fire very easily, the latter being very hard to extinguish!  It was reassuring, however, that the edge caught fire more easily than the centre, leaving me with the conclusion that plenty of oxygen is necessary for combustion.  The fact that my great-nephew has survived to be ten years of age without his quilt catching fire is a comfort - but I think I'll warn my niece to be careful!

Below is a picture of my eight samples, after the burning experiments.  I made sure that the burning was done with a very stable chunky candle which I stood in a sink with an inch of water in it.  I worked in the kitchen with the windows open and the extractor fan on.  I held the fabric pieces in tongs so I wouldn't burn my fingers.  I would like to try some more heat experiments, using both a heat gun and a soldering iron.  However, I would prefer to conduct these experiments outside for safety and with outside temperatures -6 degrees Celsius at noon the other day, a foot of snow on the ground and more falling, I think these will have to wait for more clement conditions!

5.4.1  Results of burning experiments