evolving blue jeans

A few years ago I started playing around with adding paper to high fire clay slip to create my own "paper clay".  The addition of paper actually holds the clay together and limits the amount of cracking that happens during the crucial drying stage.  During the kiln firing, all of the paper burns away and leaves a stoneware product. I figured that if the clay would burn away then denim would burn as well. I soaked the old jeans in  paper clay slip and stuffed them with newspaper to recreate the human form. As the clay dried I painted on subsequent layers of slip until the desired thickness was reached. I then painted on black copper oxide to enhance the wrinkles and texture. When they were bone dry I loaded them into my kiln and slowly started up the propane torches. Soon black smoke was billowing out of the chimney. Don't try this in an electric kiln as it would burn out your elements! Slowly I fired for about 14 hours and brought it up to 2300 degrees F. After a day of cooling I opened up the kiln and vitrified blue jeans  remained.  I became fairly obsessed with finding natural fibre objects to turn to clay.( polyester melts and leaves a big mess on the kiln bricks)   Hats, gloves, dresses, paper bags all became objects of desire. Anything with metal buttons was especially sought after because the metal survived the firing. Now, I use them for eco planters. Always evolving....