Plastic Bags

One technique I was really interested in trying out was the creating of fusible plastic, transforming plastic disposable bags into a sewable fabric. The tools necessary to make the fabric are few, all one needs is plastic bags, from supermarkets or department stores, scissors, parchment paper and an iron. Many have used this process to make items ranging wraps for sandwiches, replacing the daily use of Ziploc bags with a washable alternative, to coin purses and tote bags. This item is commonplace in many homes, as a great majority of shopping, from groceries, to household items, to clothing is sent home in plastic shopping bags and therefore a readily available material. 

Many a plastic bag lie in piles on the kitchen counters of homes, or reused in trash cans, but others make their way outdoors and take flight into our waterways. These trash bags are a dangerous water pollutant, as they pose a threat to the safety of animals. Plastic bags can easily be mistaken for jellyfish, the water inflating them and keeping them in a motion reminiscent of the jellyfish. A natural predator to the jellyfish, sea turtles innocently eat these pollutants, which constrict their digestive system and have fatal consequences. In an unjust twist of fortune, the bags by which humans carry the food home to sustain themselves cause a blockade in many sea turtles, leading them to starve to death.  A delicate yet deadly creature, the colorless appearance of the produce bags mimics that of the jellyfish’s body, the texture added by the ironing process a direct reflection of their membranous skin. This piece comments on the harmful environmental effects the consumptive culture creates. Even within seemingly small acts of pollution, such as the improper disposal of a plastic bag, the cumulative effect is much greater than typically foreseen, the larger than life scale of the creature a testament to such ignorance.  

In executing this project I chose to use clear grocery bag, typically for produce, grains, and nuts. This transparent material emulates the appearance of many jellyfish's bodily form. The collection of these materials was simple, the bags I began collecting weeks before I began from the pantry's of friends and family, and I assume in need one could raid the recycling bins of a neighborhood grocery store.

To begin, I cut the ends off of each bag, so that they were long rectangular shapes. I then cut out the portion of the bag with all writing on it, so that I was left with entirely clear rectangular shapes. This process was fairly fast, I was using a large number of plastic bags so I spent a good two hours dissecting these bags.

The next phase was to begin ironing the plastic bags, to make fusible plastic, two sheets of plastic bags are needed so that a sturdy material is produced. In order to iron the sheets together, they have to be placed between two sheets of parchment paper, so they do not melt to anything but each other. It is reccomended that this process be done outside if not in a well ventilated room, as some forms of plastic produce fumes when they are melted down.

To most effectively fuse the plastic, the iron musts be set to a low temperature using quick and even strokes across the length of the bags. This prevents the bags from shrinking to too small of a size.  One thing to make sure of is that the bags are in fact fusing together, if done too quickly some of the bags do not and can easily pull apart. Orderly and even strokes across the bags will also prevent the formation of air bubbles in the fabric. As the bags are ironed they appear to be a bit shriveled, mimicking the membranous exterior of a jellyfish's body. As aligning the bags was a meticulous process, in total, the ironing of the plastic bags I used took at least six hours.

As the structure of the jellyfish's body I used an old ripped umbrella. The first step involved using a hand saw to remove the long handle on the inside of the stem, making sure that the spokes were locked in an extended position before doing so.

Then on the outer section of the stem, I used a power drill to make a hole, to allow for ease of hanging when it is to be displayed. Then I used a seam ripper to remove the fabric from the frame. Initially I planned on saving the fabric to use as a pattern for the plastic bag material, but I later discovered that as the fabric was stretchy, without the tension of the spokes it was too small to serve as a base.  Combined, the modification of the umbrella took half an hour.

To make a pattern for the fabric, I measured the width of the umbrella and made a life-size pattern from newspaper to ensure I had gotten the measurements correct. I repeated this process for the circle on the inside of the frame, as I was to make a bell covering for that circle as well. The outer circle had a diameter of forty eight inches, the inner of twenty four.

Each of the eight triangles that composed the frame were at a ninety degree angle, so I cut out one triangle pattern and began to cut the bags accordingly, making sure to leave enough room for seaming. I cut the sides of the triangles that were to be overlapping with a beveled edge to limit the number of harsh lines in the final product. In total the pattern making and fabric cutting took forty five minutes.

I wanted to make sure nothing had gone wrong in the transfer of pattern to cut, so i used straight pins to line up each triangle in the shape of the umbrella.   The only issue I ran into was that not all of the pieces were long enough at the bottom, as I wanted them to drape over, so I marked which pieces I needed to add some length to and then began to iron them all together, making two half circles. Before I ironed the two halves together I wanted to make sure I had the seams tight enough so that there was a limited amount of draping in each panel, and had to make sizing adjustments accordingly. I then trimmed the sides that hung over using a scalloped cut.

Once I had the top dome completed I moved on to the inner circle and used the same process, but I didn't run into any sizing problems so the process went by much quicker. Altogether this process took five hours.

In hopes of producing no waste, I used the strips of plastic bags, cut out from the original because of their green print to make tentacles. I proceeded the same way, ironing two strips of bags, with the writing fused on top of itself. I then fused two of these strips together at on of their ends, forming a longer strip. From there I began to bunch the plastic bags into half circles, collecting the excess in a pinch. I then ironed this together, alternating sides, to form a snakelike shape. I did this repeatedly, finally ironing them all together to form one long tentacle. This process took approximately thirty to forty five minutes per tentacle, with sixteen tentacles in total I spent about ten hours on these alone. Jellyfish are equipped with two sets of tentacles, these larger (usually) ones for feeding and reproduction located toward the center of their body, as well as a set of smaller ones on the perimiter for transportation and protection. To make these tentacles I used the scraps leftover from trimming the bags into triangles and cut thin strips with a beveled design. I added around eight of these tentacles to each of the eight triangles, ironing them in the same process as I did to secure the panels together. These tentacles took about two hours to execute.

To assemble the jellyfish I used fishing line, both to string the tentacles as well as to hang the piece itself. I chose this material because of it's clear color and use within the water.

Upon reflection of my completed work, I am pleased with the way this piece turned out. To make the process run more smoothly a smaller iron would have been useful, as would a device to allow me to hang the piece sturdily while I was still constructing it. Using large clear trash bags could have been more time efficient for the large piece of the body, so as only to have used one or two rather than many small grocery bags. For future creations I can play with different plastic materials such as cellophane tissue paper, so that the jellyfish could have a colored tint to them. Another possible idea would be to create the tentacles in a way so that they could have had a filler inside them,  and have been even more three dimensional.  This piece would be interesting as part of a series. It would be interesting to see a large number of these hung at varying heights in an enclosed space in close proximity to one another, in a manner that entangles the viewer, a mirror to the sea turtle's entrapment.