How to manipulate aluminum mesh or "chain mail"

 

    

Chain mail! The best metal "fabric." You may have seen this material in tiny novelty evening bags, 2000s-era slinky "going out" tops and... well that's probably the extent of its use. I'm no advocate for it becoming a widespread material for fashion but I'd like to showcase some of its characteristics as a material. Y'know, for the novelty. Let's get inspired!

First thing's first: I've purchased this stuff labeled as "aluminum/metal mesh fabric", so that's your best bet if you're looking to buy it by the yard. Or you might want to explore other color options! Searching "chain mail fabric" will yield different results than what we're talking about. You're looking for a material with these metal square-shaped scales visible on the right side and rings linking the scales on the wrong side. The scales have little prongs on each corner which wrap around ring, forming X shapes.

    

    

The interlocking scales and rings produce a fabric that is light, drapey, and fluid. It's slightly reflective and behaves like a sheet of sequins. The lightness of the aluminum also means that this stuff is pretty fragile; you can absolutely rip it apart with your hands if you try. If you extend them too far, the prongs will bend and break like soda can tabs. The metal is soft enough that you can cut into it (with a pair of scissors that you don't care about!) like you would a regular fabric. This is good for getting a rough shape out or trimming off excess. However, I always pick off single scales or rings with a pair of pliers because I don't want to touch the sharp edges of cut aluminum.

Now, if you wanted to, you COULD sew two pieces of the mesh together through the rings, the prongs, or the holes in between. Because I use the chain mail as a decorative shell that fits over something else, I prefer to work with the mesh in a way that produces zero seam allowances. It should lay flat and thin this way. Typically, the only sewing that I find necessary is when I hand sew aluminum mesh to a fully-constructed project or lining, but never to itself. Instead of sewing one piece to another, you simply add area to make one bigger piece. It's one of the few materials you can add back material you took away or were missing to begin with. For this method, you will need:

• Needle-nose pliers

For marking, I also recommend:

• Sharpie, or alcohol-based pen in a bright, visible color such as red.
• Rubbing alcohol

How to "grow" your fabric

First, you have options for how you want to work. You have to decide how you want to orient the direction of the scales and rings. You can have them either running up and down (shown in the photos above) or diagonally. For my example photos, I will be doing the latter.

Wrong side.

You will always be working on the mesh's wrong side. This piece has its scales running diagonally but its edges have been cut straight. You can see that, running up and down, the pattern alternates ring-scale-ring-scale like a checkerboard. 

I am going to take this long strip and double its length by marking a line at its approximate half width. Because the scales run diagonally, a "grain" will alternate between scales and rings. I have marked in black marker, which is difficult to see in-photo, so I have also highlighted it digitally. The red marks denote the prongs that you need to open up with your pliers.

    

(You'll notice that this split will not divide the piece perfectly in half because the top side has three rings per two scales, while the bottom has two rings per two scales. The resulting strip will not be even. But math is less important when you can always add more if you miscalculate),

Open up every marked prong. The easiest way to do this is to open all the prongs facing left with your right plier hand (or the reverse if you're left-handed), and then turn your piece around and open up the opposite prongs that were facing right but are now facing left. Then begin to separate your pieces.

Take the ends and connect them: one prong in one ring, keeping the alternating pattern. Gently push the prongs closed with your thumbnail. I recommend you close one prong to its ring at a time, and then go down the line like you're seaming it closed.

And that's how you add pieces together seamlessly! If you want, you can use the rubbing alcohol to erase your Sharpie lines.

Now how do you do it when the scales and rings run up and down?

This method is not more or less work than the first as you are still opening up two prongs at a time. You may find it easier, visually, to work like this because one side must be all scales and the other must be all rings. Plus, the prongs are all facing the same direction. It's up to you; I like to work on the diagonal because I like the way it looks on the right side.

Creating Dimension

If you want your chain mail to hang more taut against a solid form, you can effectively create darts, like you would on any other fabric. The principle of removing a section of material and connecting the remaining to close the absence is the same. It just takes a bit of finesse.

To give a basic idea, I'll be using a simple square shape to create a corner as if to fit around a cube. I'm working on the diagonal. 

Remove a square or rectangle shape from the corner of your material. On my example, the corner piece on the removed square is a ring, and the apex of the "dart" is also a ring. This also works if the apex is a scale. The important thing is that you remove ONE of the pieces adjacent to the corner piece.

You can pick either of these pieces. I have chosen to remove the scale under the ring instead of the scale to the left of the ring.

Locate the scale you elected to keep attached and link it to the ring that was leftover after removing the scale. If you have trouble seeing it, it's the one ring that is attached to one prong at the bottom and one at the side. The rest of the rings are either attached to three prongs, or two prongs on opposite sides of each other. Don't worry if the three rings in the corner overlap, slightly.

Continue to link prongs and rings as if you were connecting two flat pieces together.

The method is the largely same if your mesh is running up and down instead of on the diagonal. The immediate difference is that the edges will be a row or column of either rings or scales, and not a combination of both. Once again, one leg of your dart needs to be all rings, the other leg needs to be all scales.

    

Because one leg is all rings and the other is all scales, the mesh does not have a specific piece that is in the exact corner. The scale or ring that you will remove will be in the same row or column as the unfinished edge. I have removed the scale and left the ring.

    

A way to remember which scale's prongs correspond to each ring is to remember that a single scale's prongs will only attach to four different rings. If a ring already has one of a scale's prongs, the other prongs should attach elsewhere.

Now test if you made a clean corner by draping your work over a box!

So what are some potential applications? Well, there's that tiny handbag in the header image.

I actually didn't make this from scratch. I thrifted this bag before I noticed that its depth was too shallow to fit, well, anything. My phone and some credit cards but not my keys, it couldn't pass a test of the barest minimum requirements. It was about 1.5 inches or 10 scales shallower than what you see currently. I disassembled the entire thing, tearing the clasp off, making a bigger lining, and expanding the shell. Then I hand sewed the shell to the lining around the opening with some clear thread.

Imagine that this bag is in its pathetically thin initially state. The vertical red lines represent where I opened up the prongs and split the mesh. The bag already had a squared bottom because there was some corner shaping (which I reverse engineered and copied for my tutorial) so it was just a matter of inserting a straight panel between the lines. I bought my extra chain mail in two 4-inch square swatches because that's the beauty of this stuff: you don't have to commit to too much extra yardage. Just make your pieces wider or longer if you have the adequate square area. You have the tools to make whatever shape you need!