New Zealand Fiber Arts Workshop #1: Paverpol T-shirt Doll

Upon my arrival to Napier, I walked straight off the plane into the first workshop at the Deco Belle Fiber Workshop in New Zealand.


Janet Stuart was teaching a technique called Paverpol Sculptures. This is a technique whereby you turn T-shirts into Garden Sculptures.

The lady to the right is a work in progress. She will soon be given a book or flowers in her hands. Janet used a printed silk scarf to create her skirt. This allowed the sculpture to have a patterned dress.



Meet Janet Stuart, the workshop leader.




Basically, you begin by bending wire to form the body for your figure. You can use a Styrofoam ball to help form the head. Once you have the body shape formed with your wire, you wrap the entire thing with aluminum foil strips. This is my doll below.

And here is Betty's doll.

Then, you take fabric t-shirt strips and soak them in paverpol, which is a special white glue. You can color it with pavercolor or grout coloring if you like. The fabric strips will stick to the aluminum foil.

I gave my doll a funky hair treatment as you can see.

Once you have the body wrapped, you can then drape more strips onto the figure to create her clothing. Here you can see several figures formed by members of the workshop.


Here is my doll... a funny thing happened. On the left you see her as I draped her clothing and planned to let her dry. The wind decided to get involved, and when she was drying, she fell over. So... she now has a crazy, crazy skirt that lifts up in the back, and actually, I like it better. Funny how that works.

Here are some of Janet's "in-process" sculptures... amazing, yes?



All that is left, is to paint the doll, and then let her dry. She will be fine outside in my yard.

If you would like to learn more about this technique, check out the following book and website.
Book: From T-shirt to Garden Statue by Jossy de Roode. www.paverpol.com