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10. TEXTILE SCAFFOLD

Introduction: Textile Scaffold

Textile scaffolds are fiber-based structures that function as supporting, shaping, or growth-enabling frameworks. They can be flexible or rigid & are created through the interaction of textiles with processes such as casting, crystallization, composite formation, or molding. Across disciplines — from architecture & material science to biodesign & fashion — textile scaffolds are used to generate 3-dimensional forms, guide material growth, or act as substrates for new structural formations.

Within the Fabricacademy context, the focus lies on experimental & exploratory approaches: - How can textiles serve as active agents in shaping materials? - How can fiber structures influence form, behavior, & transformation?

INSPIRATION & REFERENCES

LENA RUAN

Lena Ruan is a student at Central Saint Martins & a rising textile & fashion designer based in London & Vienna. She explores her bi-cultural identity & experimental textile practices through her BA collection, blending craftsmanship with contemporary form. Her process-driven work, tagged under @lena.ruan, reflects both conceptual depth & material precision. instagram: lena.ruan

KOFTA

Konstantin Kofta is a Ukrainian-born designer who transforms leather into sculptural, architectural accessories. Drawing on inspirations from anatomy, Baroque forms & insect metamorphosis, he blends high-tech techniques like 3D-modelling with traditional craft to produce wearable art at the intersection of design & fine art. koftastudio.com instagram: koftastudio

BERNARDITA COSSIO

Bernardita Cossio is a Chilean artist whose work fuses sewing & ceramics by pouring liquid clay into hand-stitched leather molds that capture the contours of textile skin. The resulting porcelain pieces carry the imprints of seams, folds, & pressure, transforming soft fabric processes into sculptural permanence. www.ditacossio.com instagram: ditacossio

VALIA KAPELETZI

Valia Kapeletzi is an Athens-based textile designer & artist whose work explores material transformation through experimental, handcrafted processes. Inspired by organic forms & natural textures, she creates sculptural textiles & installations that engage with light, transparency, & spatial perception. I first met Valia during my internship with Iris van Herpen in Amsterdam. www.valiakap.com instagram: valiakap

MENDER MAKER

Laura Brown, known as MenderMaker, creates textile artworks that preserve the emotional narratives held in used fabrics. By transforming familiar, sentimental materials, she highlights their personal and sustainable value www.mender-maker.com instagram: mender.maker

SILKE DECKER

Silke Decker is a German designer & artist who explores the expressive possibilities of porcelain beyond tradition. Working with minimalist forms & her signature “cord porcelain” technique, she transforms the material’s soft, raw flexibility into contemporary, tactile objects with a distinct & recognizable aesthetic. www.silkedecker.de instagram: silke.decker

MINERAL SERIES

Isaac Monté is a designer exploring sustainability through experimental materials and biotechnology. By transforming waste streams into provocative objects, he challenges consumption habits and imagines new ecological futures. His work is exhibited internationally, including in the Centre Pompidou collection. www.mineralseries.com instagram: isaacmonte instagram: mineralseries

DARRYL BEDFORD

Darryl Bedford is an Australian paper artist who merges origami with digital design to create kinetic, radiolarian-inspired sculptures. His work spans art, fashion, architecture, & robotics, & has been showcased internationally. He also champions paper as a therapeutic & educational tool. www.drawstringorigami web: beacons.ai instagram: vectoriseart

PRIVIOUS PROJECTS

FROM BACKPACK TO BACK

Foldeble Backpack: sandwitch Material

BUGPACK

Leather molded Backpack: of an PILLBUG

ASSIGNMENT

CRYSTAL

During this assignment, we were guided in the lab by Maria José.

We used her recipe for Borax crystallisation:

Ingredients:

  • 100 g water
  • 65 g Borax

First, I measured 300 ml of water + 195 g of Borax & combined them. Unfortunately, despite constant stirring, the Borax quickly settled at the bottom & hardened.

It took hours to dissolve the solid mass again using heat, continuous stirring, shaking, & scraping.

For the next attempt, I heated the water right from the start & added the Borax only in small portions, step by step, with constant stirring.

This method worked significantly better!!

DEVELOPER MODE

During my later research, I noticed that there seems to be no universal recipe for Borax crystallisation: the quantities vary widely — from 65 g per 100 ml to 50 g per 500 ml.

First, I divided the dissolved Borax solution into 2 containers & placed leftover pieces of my BioChrome textiles into the solution.

It is important to position the samples so that they hang freely in the solution & do not touch the container walls or the bottom.

The solution quickly turned yellow / orange. After only a few hours, crystals had begun to form on the fabric sample & on the wool.

Meanwhile, excess Borax settled at the bottom of the container.

Additionally, I also hung small eucalyptus branches into the solution.

CRYSTAL GLASSES

For another crystallisation experiment, I decided to create an object using 3D printing on textiles.

To do this, I used Fusion Slicer to generate a five-part geometric layout based on my 3D sunglasses model created in StudioTripo. The resulting pattern consisted of triangulated sections that could be printed directly onto fabric & later submerged into the Borax solution for crystallisation.

In my opinion, triangular geometry may be considered somewhat outdated, but the crystalline segments felt like a perfect conceptual match for the crystal-growth process.

Materials & Software

  • StudioTripo
  • Fusion Slicer
  • 3D printer (FDM)
  • Textile: Net
  • TPU filament
  • Borax solution

Fabrication

The 5 triangular segments were printed directly onto fabric using TPU.

  • First, I printed 2 layers / 0.4 mm.
  • Then I stretched the textile over the print bed using clamps,
  • adjusted the Z-axis,
  • & restarted the print directly onto the textile.

(For the X segment, this method worked very well. For the PRUSA , I had several issues & eventually had to stop the print.)

There is also the option to set this up directly in the slicer by adding a pause after the first layers, so the printer stops automatically & continues printing at the correct height after the textile is mounted.

During printing, the filament fused with the textile, creating a hybrid material: soft textile base + rigid geometric scaffold.

Once printed, the pieces were cut out & glued together.

During the process — & due to the lack of stability — the TPU was very flexible, the number of layers may have been too low, & the print had been interrupted earlier than planned. As a result, the assembled model turned out too soft & unstable to function as the intended pair of glasses.

Therefore, I decided to abandon the eyewear concept for this experiment & instead transformed the printed segments into a more abstract sculptural object.

Afterwards, I prepared 1.5 liters of solution for immersion in the Borax crystallisation bath.

Out of concern that the solution might still be too hot & could cause the 3D print to detach from the mesh, I let it cool down slightly.

In hindsight, this was likely a mistake: the crystallisation began very quickly, a large amount of Borax settled at the bottom, & I suspect the solution may have been oversaturated.

This made the removal the next day difficult, & the object was damaged in the process.

While I am somewhat disappointed with the final piece, I am very pleased with the photographs I captured.

WOOL x CERAMIC

For the next scaffold assignment, I decided to experiment with textile x ceramic techniques.

I crocheted a small vase from wool & then dipped it into liquid casting slip.

To hold the shape, I stuffed the inside with napkins & used toothpicks to position & support the form.

After shaping, I dried the piece with a heat gun & continued drying it in the oven at 40 °C.

DENIM MOLD

For another textile–ceramic experiment, I created double-layered vase forms using leftover denim.

My goal was to transfer both the fabric texture &, even more importantly, the seams into the clay body.

Once the textile forms were sewn, I built a hanging rig to suspend them & then filled each form with casting slip.

  • In the first form, I left the slip inside for about 50 minutes, resulting in a wall thickness of roughly 4 mm.

  • In the second form, the slip remained for around 1 hour & 25 minutes, producing a wall thickness slightly above 5 mm.

After carefully pouring out the slip, I kept the forms hanging longer & placed a board underneath to help flatten & stabilize the base of the vase.

When they were stable enough to move, I transferred them to the drying oven & dried them at 40 °C for a few hours. From time to time, I tried to gently open the seams & remove the clay vase from the denim mold. However, the drying process was uneven: the top dried too quickly & began to crack, while the bottom was still soft & unstable.

Because of this, I decided to leave the clay inside the denim form & fire both materials together in the kiln.

PVA + CELLULOS

For the next assignment / short project, I reused the ant abdomen molds that I had 3D-printed in PLA for my BIOFABRICATING MATERIALS Assignment (for growing mycelium).

I also saved the washed-out PVA filament from the Ashes to Ashes project.

For this experiment, I tore paper napkins into small pieces & layered them into the mold, applying liquid PVA between each layer.

During the first attempt, the material was extremely difficult to remove from the mold. I finally managed to release it using a heat gun, but the material became dented & deformed in the process.

The surface texture of the mold was only partially transferred. In the areas where the PVA was applied too thickly, the drying process was noticeably slower.

For the next attempt, I first coated the inside of the PLA mold, then poured liquid PVA into it, & again placed small pieces of paper towel on top. Afterwards, I pressed the material from the first attempt back into the mold.

The material can be worked very thin, making it lightweight, slightly translucent, & flexible.

LEATHER MOLDING

previous projects

For the final short project of the Textile Scaffold Assignment, I chose LEATHER MOLDINGg.

I decided to use my 3D scans of my ears — previously used for earrings — & translate them into a leather Crossbody / Clash.

First, I scaled the 3D model to the desired dimensions in Rhino CAD (approx. 29 × 17 cm). Then I used the command “Patch over object” to create a surface without undercuts.

With “Offset surface”, I generated a 2. surface with a 3 mm offset, corresponding to the thickness of the leather I planned to use.

I decided to mill a 2-part pressing mold from 18 mm MDF. To do this, I adjusted the model height to match the material thickness, so that both mold halves — positive & negative — consisted of 4 stacked plates, which I then glued together.

Next, I divided the molds into 18 mm sections using the Boolean Split command & arranged the segments side by side.

Between the 8 parts, I left 6.35 mm of spacing — the width of the drill bit — so the bit could separate the pieces directly during milling.

Additionally, I created a surrounding boundary around the positive mold parts to minimize free-cutting time. Finally, I connected all parts with small bridges/tabs to prevent individual segments from moving or breaking out during the milling process.

VCARVE Software

VCarve is a CNC software by Vectric designed to prepare milling jobs & generate toolpaths.

It allows users to create & edit 2D & 3D designs — from simple shapes to complex models such as reliefs, text, logos, & decorative details.

VCarve is not a traditional modeling program like Fusion, Rhino, or Blender — it is a CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) software.

The first step is to configure the exact dimensions of the material & set the 0 point of the CNC.

Once the workspace is set up, you can import the STL file & adjust its position relative to the material.

Set the bit diameter (6.35 mm), precision, & feed speed (80%), & use the step-by-step toolpath preview to simulate the milling result.

It is recommended to divide the milling project into 2 operations:

  1. Roughing Toolpath — faster & deeper pass, removes the bulk material.
  2. Finishing Toolpath — refines the surface and details.

The 2 milling toolpaths can be exported as separate files (if a smaller bit is used for the finishing pass) or combined into a single .nc file (if the same bit is used for both operations).

We worked with an ASIA Robotica CNC machine. I secured the large 18 mm MDF plate & set the home / zero point using the remote control, adjusting X, Y & Z.

After that, the milling process could begin.

During my milling process, a complication occurred: after the roughing toolpath was completed, the program stopped.

When I attempted to start the Finishing Toolpath, the home/zero position had shifted, & the router began cutting in the middle of the job.

Fortunately, we solved the issue quickly. We stopped the process & saved the Finishing Toolpath separately again in VCarve. Since both toolpaths had already taken almost 8 hours of milling time, we decided to reduce the milling time as much as possible.

For example, I removed the separation of the 8 parts from the toolpath.

I later cut them manually using the vertical circular saw & the table saw.

Afterwards, I cut a few additional parts using the band saw.

Then I glue the individual parts together using wood glue & let them dry overnight

Surface Finishing

On the following day, I used a handheld Dremel with various attachments to refine the surface of the mold. I carefully removed the machining marks left by the CNC toolpath & smoothed the geometry to achieve a more even finish.

Surface Sealing

Because the surface was relatively rough & MDF is absorbent, I sealed both mold halves with 2 layers of waterproof wood glue.

After the second layer of wood glue had dried, I sanded the surface again using very fine sandpaper.

Then I cut the leather & soaked it in lukewarm water for about 15 minutes.

Afterwards, I wrung the Leather out, dried it, stretched it over the positive mold, & shaped it by hand.

I decided to use the suede side of the leather facing outward because I prefer the color.

( This may have a disadvantage: the wood glue I plan to use later to stiffen the leather form might not adhere well to the inner surface, which is smooth.)

Next, I pressed the negative mold over it step by step, trying to minimize wrinkles at the edges by pulling the leather.

Finally, I clamped the wet leather between the 2 molds using 4 screw clamps.