Fabricademy Week 7 : The Textile Scaffold – Structural Windings and Crystals

Structural Windings and Crystals

Part 1 – Preparation & structure

Part 2 – Crystallisation: Creating the Alum solution and growing the crystals on the structure

Part 3 – Giant Crystals: Growing the crystals on the structure

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Part 1 – preparation and structure

Looking at geometric windings, I thought it might be interesting to follow some traditional techniques.

I decided to scavenge some pieces of wood from the FabLab to use as a base and upright structure.

I marked out points along the side of a circular piece and an upright block and then hammed in nails all along the points, maintaining a straight line.

I then began to wrap the yarn around the nails, starting at the base at the upright rod and continued left and right around the nails.

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Part 2 – Crystallisation: Testing and creating the Alum solution 

Whilst making the textiles scaffold, I realised that this way of using using yarn on a wooden and nail structure would also be good for creating a crystal design.

We did some tests on class to see which crystals would grow best by following the recipes from the tutorial.

We tried sugar and salt on a small piece of the same yarn, which we tested to be a natural plant fibre.

The sugar crystals take a while to grown and the alum is faster. See the results below.

I would like to continue this part of the project and immerse the whole structure in a  crystal solution. Here are the tests using alum solution:

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Part 3 – Giant Crystals: Growing the crystals on the structure

Final structure – Video on my Instagram