quilts
when York quilters guild came over to collage one of my first ideas that hit me was a metal quilt mirroring scale mail. our quilts needed to be both inspired by quilts and my previse work on robots, patterns, colours, form, etc.
first I made a copper 1mm thick sample with a hole 2mm, 3mm hole from the edge. I would later change my copper to be 0.5mm thick to shave of some weight, I also 5mm rings that where 1.6mm thick for strength.
but I made a stencil for the squares and cut out 15 coppers and 10 zincs.
I enamelled 3 of my copper squares green to represent my robots eyes. I haven't done enamelling myself before but i didn't mind it, I did have some problems with my layering.
back to the zinc I've done acid etching before but this time I veered from using a layer and scratching it off to open the zinc. but first I degreased the zinc marked a number from 1-10 and taped over number and re-writing it. this number is supposed to help me create a continues pattern that fits square-to-square.
before I add the pattern I went over the zinc with a layer of aquatint which darkens the eaten metal, then I put the zinc in a row from 1-5 and 6-10 and applied some special parcel tape over in a hazard line pattern.
I also had to drop some acid on a spec of zinc I missed which didn't fully eat it but it was fine. next for the 12 other copper squares I heat petined them a brighter orange by going around with a low flame. I also had to connect half a dowel with a divot for the copper wire so my quilt could be hanged.
