Lightly beaten cotton on overbeaten abaca will puff up when dry.

Here, the ochre ground is abaca beaten 6 hours. It shrinks a good bit (maybe 30%) by itself. The veronese green shapes are 60 - 75 minute cotton linters which produces a low or no shrinkage fiber. When a low shrinkage patch of cotton is stuck on a sheet of high shrinkage abaca, the tension during drying makes the cotton area puff out to accommodate the greater shrinkage of abaca.

step by step process to make a “puffer”

The purposely irregular shape in Photo 1 is made up of still wet, but pressed ochre abaca sheets. The next photo is a thick sheet of freshly pulled cotton broken into shapes while still on the mold. These shapes are then couched individually - and carefully - onto a scrap of pellon or even onto a large hand. Then they are transferred onto the ochre ground.

In Photo 3, Barbara is “couching” a cotton shape from pellon to background abaca. Once we had the shapes in place, we blotted them again with a large piece of pellon. We liked the light coming through the wet parts of the pellon as we peeled it away so we include it here even though it also shows our dye still running a little bit.

As shown by the sheen in photo 6, we slathered on the methyl cellulose, a reversible glue, that will help strengthen the bonding of the abaca and cotton. (The cotton could pop off the abaca as it dries because of the shrinkage differential.) We left it uncovered overnight. It finished drying quite quickly the next day in the hot summer sun.

We tend to think of the front of the sheet as the two color side, but it is beautiful on both sides. Either side may face out in any particular composition.

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