| I'm guessing these "pillows" are made of polyethylene, or at least the ones I've received in packages appeared to be. It seems likely that these cushions given their highly disposable profile would not be made from "virgin" poly film, although it bears checking out. Plus,I'm guessing the air permeability of polyethylene film is not going allow the air pillow to stay inflated indefinitey under the weight of the folded textile, especially something with the heft of a quilt.
I wonder if lengths of some sort of flexible barrier film could be heat-sealed on all sides (minus a small aperture), filled with air through the tiny opening, and given a final seal to produce a similar shaped pillow. (It's easy for me to hypothesize but, again, bears testing)
Jane Hammond Textile Conservator Good afternoon, fellow TexCon’lers – A pretty creative and inexpensive solution for padding out the folds in a quilt, imho. I think it would work just fine if your storage box/shipping box is large enough for the folded quilt/textile with the ‘air pillow sausage’ tubes included. It would be something you would have to check if you already have storage/shipping boxes on hand that you can’t afford to replace with bigger/larger if you do use the ‘air pillow sausage’ method as you definitely don’t want to squash/compress the padded-out quilt in its storage box. The fact that the ‘air pillow sausage’ tubes don’t compress is a good thing as long as the box is big enough to begin with. I would want to experiment with how long the air pillows held their air while being compressed if I wanted to use this method for padding out for more than a few months. I’ve used the colorful ‘pool noodles’ (first wrapped in heavy duty aluminum foil) inserted into cotton stockinette tubing to provide padding out for folded textiles. Regards, Margaret (Meg) Geiss-Mooney Textile/Costume Conservator Professional Associate, AIC mgmooney@xxxxxxxxxxxx …These sausages were muslin tubes filled with the plastic air pillows used for shipping, each pillow about 4 1/2" x 8". The pillows are made by Storopack and are of polyethylene film. An interesting solution. However, for long-term storage I don't see this as viable. Most importantly the pillows don't compress so you'd have to compress the quilt in the box to make room for the pillows. In other words, you'd sacrifice the artifact for the storage material….
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