Make Paper - Cutting the Jeans

Gretchen Schermerhorn: Hi, I am Gretchen from Pyramid Atlantic and today I am showing you how to make paper by hand. In this clip, I am actually going to show you how to cut the fabric and rinse it and prepare it for beating. So the first thing you will need to do is cut up your blue jeans into small pieces. Now it is helpful to have a rotary cutter and a self-healing mat for this, but if you don't, scissors will work just fine. So the first thing is I am going to cut up the jeans into larger pieces and I am going to avoid the seams because they are doubled over fabric and they will have a tendency to jam up the beater. So I am going to tear them into strips, then I am going to begin either using the rotary cutter or just the scissors to cut them into one inch pieces. You don't want them any larger than this, because again, they can have a tendency especially if they are new jeans to jam up the beater. So I am going to keep cutting and this part takes a little while. I am going to keep cutting until I have for our particular beater, one pound of fabric. So the next thing after you have cut up one pound of fabric is you want to soak the blue jeans scraps in water, in a five gallon bucket of water and if they are new, then I would advise doing it for at least a couple of days to really get out any residual soap that might be in the jeans or to get out -- if they are a new pair of jeans - get out the sizing that is - tends to be in the new jeans. If done properly, this will really help in the next step that we will be going to which is beating these jeans to a pulp to make our paper.