Greetje van Tiem used old newspapers to make yarn for a design school project. You read that right. van Tiem developed a process to spin the paper into fine guage yarn for weaving rugs, curtains and upholstery.
1 newspaper page = 20 yards of yarn. When the newspaper gets wet it might be messy, yes? So I’m thinking...what would happen if you mix the paper pulp with polymer clay and maybe instead of extruding clay, you spin it like yarn and then bake it. Could it work? Would it make a fine guage yarn that is more durable than newspaper? Do you even need the paper? Has anyone tried to spin the clay alone or with another fiber? I know it sounds crazy, but what if it worked?
When you look closely you can see letters, a part of the date and colour schemes appear from a photo. You are not able to read the newspaper anymore, but the memory will be kept alive.
Read the article at de zeen
Link via Craftzine
Wowwwwwww brilliant ! I wonder what is the process… but the results are awsome ! Thanks for sharing!
People have made “yarn” from extruded polymer clay. I think somebody actually knitted a sweater; I don’t remember where I saw that (if I find the link I’ll let you know), I just remember them saying it was really heavy. Curing it must have been interesting; if you didn’t want to drive yourself crazy joining ends all the time you’d need to make really long strands of clay.
I’m a handspinner, knitter, crocheter, weaver, and I work with clay too. I’ve thought about finding a way to combine fiber and clay, but haven’t found anything that seems interesting (or do-able) so far. (If anyone’s interested, I did post a response on the de zeen site about how I thought you might go about spinning newspaper.)
[...] October we looked at an artist who was recycling newspapers in an unusual way. Now greenUPGRADER shows you how to spin your own newspaper yarn with this tutorial. [...]