My fabric pictures start… in the insulation aisle 🙃
Yep: Kinusaiga is made on a polystyrene board. But not just any kind.
And that's often where things go wrong.
What's the board for?
Kinusaiga means tucking pieces of fabric into grooves cut into a flat board, to form a picture. (The whole story is here: Kinusaiga: what is it, really?)
You cut into the board with a scalpel along the drawing, then push the edges of the fabric into the cuts.
So it has to cut cleanly, and hold the fabric tight.
Expanded: avoid
Expanded polystyrene is the white stuff from packaging. Little beads stuck together.
It crumbles and it squashes.
Not exactly what you want from a picture 🙄
Extruded: the one you want
Extruded polystyrene (or XPS) is a foam with a fine, tight grain.
Light and dense: the grooves stay clean, and the fabric holds well.
I buy it in big 1.20 × 0.60 m boards, in the insulation aisle then, and cut it down in my studio.
What about foam board?
You do see Kinusaiga made on foam board, the kind used for drawing.
It's not my choice: it's very thin and not very dense, so very fragile.
(Plus, it costs a fortune in shops 🤭)
To be clear: Maeno Setsu, who invented Kinusaiga, herself works on a thin but dense foam board, “styrene board”, commonly found in 1 to 7 mm. So a thin base is hardly heresy in itself.
And thickness, then?
My boards are 2 cm thick.
For the fabric to hold, the grooves need to be deep enough. Cut deep grooves into a board that's too thin, and it ends up coming apart.
And a board that's too thin and light looks cheap, I think.
At 2 cm, it's sturdy, and it's perfect for finishing the edges with a ribbon.
Cheap Kinusaiga kits
A participant who came all the way from Paris to one of my workshops had first tried a kit bought on Amazon, on foam board. “Horrible”: too thin, the fabric wouldn't hold. She gave up after 3 minutes, and the kit ended up in the bin.
She still came all the way from Paris to make mine… and she loved it 🥹
Another example: recently, someone got in touch to have one of my kits customised.
She'd first bought one on Amazon to try before deciding, and apparently, she didn't like it.
I told her it might simply have been the quality of what she'd received 😉
So now you know why dirt-cheap kits in white polystyrene or foam board don't give good results.
In my kits and workshops, it's extruded
Unsurprisingly, my Discovery Kit and my workshops both start from a 10 × 10 cm board of extruded polystyrene, 2 cm thick.
It costs a bit more, yes.
But you can be sure of the result.
Next time, I'll show you my tools, top quality too 😏
Know someone who'd enjoy this?
