I've been experimenting with different techniques lately and one of the things that I've been interested in is combining yarn with resin. I ran a few experiments and wanted to share them with you here!
I started with a scrap pink granny square that I had lying around, a grey star and a hank of really crazy yarn that I wasn't sure how I would use in any other way. I chose a square mold that will fit the granny square perfectly, to test how it would look in the square, I am just choosing to see if I can harden the star with resin and how it looks, and for the crazy yarn, it's going into an orb to see how it reacts.
I'm going to start by saying that the results were not what I was expecting. Each yarn seemed to have a different reaction to the resin, with some interesting effects.
First up, the granny square. As the yarn absorbed the resin, it took on this translucent effect that I was not expecting. If you notice, the whole color of the yarn changed to a totally different pink! I am wondering if I can seal the yarn in any way - starch, some spray sealant? I actually like the effect that happened, but I would like to know if there is any way to preserve this kind of yarn.
The grey star. This one I just wanted to see what would happen if I coated the shape in resin. The color changed somewhat, darkening with the resin application... but the shape was retained. It is very hard, and interestingly enough, you can still see the fiber details of the piece.
Last up, the orb. I only took a few strands - a blue, ,a green, a pink and an orange, soaked them in resin and placed them in the orb, filling it further with resin. This one came out completely dark, but had some really interesting aspects to it. I want to try this again with less yarn, to see if it looks more interesting in the orb. I struggled here again with resin bubbles.... which I believe is just telling me that I need to go ahead with my purchase of a vacuum chamber if I want to keep trying interesting experiments like this one.
I'm not really calling any of the pieces here a total success. I do like the granny square and I'm currently using it as a coaster. The star may find its way on to some three dimensional piece of art that I have yet to create... but the orb is going on the pfft shelf in my studio, where it might become something else, or it might just sit there as a dusty relic of something I once tried.
I think there will definitely be more experiments in this realm, once I get the vacuum chamber. I think mixing in this type of medium really requires that total removal of bubbles, especially some of the shapes I'm creating.
I hope you've enjoyed this weeks chaos!!