Layered Textiles * Kim Thittichai

New Surfaces with Heat Tools, Machine and Hand Stitch. This innovative textile workbook teaches fiber and textile artists how to combine synthetic fabrics, papers, and films using heat tools, soldering irons, and creative stitching to distort and melt materials into breathtaking, high-texture three-dimensional art surfaces.

The Story: Written by prominent British textile artist, educator, and author Kim Thittichai, this highly experimental 2011 masterwork transforms a standard sewing room into an exceptionally active, boundary-pushing design workspace. Thittichai has a technique-first strategy demonstrating that fabricating high-impact mixed-media textiles relies on a willingness to burn, melt, distort, and reconstruct materials to build unexpected surface depths.

The book takes fiber artists, embroiderers, and mixed-media crafters through an incredible landscape of fabric manipulation across its heavily illustrated pages. The layout organizes textile education into clear technical skill modules - meticulously detailing tool safety, heat gun control, and material interactions. The text unpeels exactly how to layer diverse substrates like Lutradur, Tyvek, pelmet vilene, acrylic paints, and metallic foils, tracking precise guidelines to safely apply heat tools, pierce melted cavities, weld layers together, and use free-motion machine stitching to lock down vibrant, abstract landscapes.

A highly practical project book. Thittichai guides readers through a series of step-by-step design exercises - ranging from texturing decorative vessel structures to layering gallery-ready wall hangings - complete with comprehensive material checklists and clear visual construction guides. Published as a premium hardcover by Batsford Books, this technique-filled resource serves as an essential showpiece for craft and hobby shelves, instructing the reader's mind on how to build an unbreakable internal sanctuary of contemporary tactile expression.

Perfect For: Textile artists, adventurous quilters, and fashion design students looking for an uncomplicated, highly visual reference book to master advanced heat-tool fabric manipulation; crafters trying to break away from traditional needlework into raw, three-dimensional mixed-media surfaces; and library collections anchoring their advanced fiber arts and hobby guides.

Published 2011 by Batsford Books. Hardcover with this cool soft fabric-feeling surface.

Crafts & Hobbies / Fiber Arts / Mixed-Media Textile Design / Advanced Machine & Hand Stitching / Fabric Manipulation Manuals / Studio Art References