Boxford Resources System

The principle of engraving is relatively straight forward, I would make students aware of the best artwork being monochromatic or Line art.

At keystage 3 I would expect pupils to collaborate and produce a pair of jeans with a theme. The project would include a design and make section with an imaginary client.

At keystage 4 I would be making this a personal design project allowing the student to stamp their own identity on the jeans.

At AS level I would be looking to the student suggesting their own theme.

2011 Jeans Show

I have wanted to visit the issue of laser engraving jeans for some time. The realisation the children's jeans would be perfectly acceptable for a GCSE project and that they would give a number of advantages. Firstly, they would fit inside the laser machine far more easily, they would still be able to display the same level of design skill needed for full size jeans and finally, that they would look far better on a table as the manikin would be at eye level.

I then needed to look for some cool artwork, the draw of Maury type tattoos as body art is unmistakable and I chose to look for sets of artwork to engrave onto the denim. This type of artwork had all the advantages that you need for a laser cut image the markings are thick, high contrast and evocative.

I started to look for cheap jeans and manikins on Ebay to discover that new jeans could be had from 99p and that manikins were far too expensive.

So I bought my first pair of jeans and experimented.

Jeans /

The front image seems to have suffered from a little burning or scorching.

This was unexpected for the following reasons.

When I started this project I was unaware that I would be required to solve a number of problems.

I had decided to make a manikin out of 12mm plywood and 22mm dowel.

One quarter sheet would easily make two manikins. The feet are double thickness.

The first problem manifest itself thus; Having made my first set of jeans using some of the artwork above, I started stuffing them with shredded paper that we use in our packing dept.

To my horror the jeans split along the engraving, the material had obviously been significantly weakened by the engraving process, far more than I had expected.

I almost abandoned the project at this point, my thinking being, that if the jeans were not durable they would not help a student at GCSE as the artifact could not be trusted to last through a fashion show to marking.

It would be necessary to strengthen the material so I ironed on interfacing along the length of the leg on the next pair of jeans to add the support that the denim would loose during the process.

This was sufficient to allow light usage i.e. for a fashion show and still be in one piece for marking.

Interfacing

This has proven to be very successful.

Finally when raster scanning the image it was found that a setting of about 75% speed with 100% gun on a 30watt laser gave a good often suitable first cut.

Both the tattoo images on the back of the jeans have been scanned twice, on repeating this with the front images they scorched.

I also tried corded jeans which just burned as they were not made from cotton.

Dragon