The Retrospective Collections has received an exciting new addition! We got a surprise box from our dear friend Marie Segal. If you are new to polymer clay, you should spend some time learning about Marie and all the things she has brought to our community. She got into polymer back in 1978 and is credited with promoting the use of the pasta machine to condition and sheet the clay. I can’t imagine life before that! We’ve had the good fortune to have Marie as a teacher at numerous retreats. One of our favorite books on polymer is “The Polymer Clay Artist’s Guide: A Directory of Mixes, Colors, Textures, Faux Finishes, and Surface Effects”, that Marie wrote in 2013. One great way to learn about Marie is to head to Polymer Clay Daily (the wonderful blog written by Cynthia Tinapple, which should be part of your daily routine) and search for Marie. Cynthia wrote a post in September, 2005 (https://polymerclaydaily.com/2005/09/18/extruded-polymer-yarn/) that featured our new acquisition.

In 1994-1995, using Premo metallics and Sculpey Bake and Bond colors in big bars, Marie made extruded “yarn”. She used cyanoacrylate (mostly Loctite) to join all the lengths of ‘cord’ and then knit a couple bomber jackets. She used a Kemper extruder with a modified caulking gun to do all the extruding. It was knit on a knitting ring and then crocheted together with her makeshift yarn.

We are so happy Marie entrusted us with this monumental work. After a fair amount of debate, we mounted it, along with its matching hat, in a cloth backed shadow box, above the book shelves in the classroom.