This week’s craft was silk painting.  Unlike my previous post, this is most definitely not stupid simple, and I can safely say that I learned a great deal including several things in the “what not to do” category.  Still, I think I can be said to have been moderately successful.  This silk painting, unlike what I have done before, is a resist painting.  That is, before painting an insoluble compound is applied to the silk and when the silk is painted, those portions not covered by the resist are painted and those that are covered remain white.  It is the same basic principal as batik, but the execution is slightly different.  Here the silk is stretched on a frame.  (Many thanks to my good friend Michelle who lent me hers.  I am always reluctant to sink a great deal of money into equipment until I know that it is something I am going to pursue for more than one or two projects.  It is very handy to have friends that are also into crafting because then you can trade expertise and equipment.)  You then put your design onto the silk.  In this case, I used a projector to project my design (a 14th century Egyptian design taken from the Ashmolean collection.) onto the silk and traced the design.  Here I made my first “what not to do” mistake.  I used regular pencil.  This does not wash out of silk as well and one might hope.  Next time I will have to find something better.  Any embroiderers out there have a solution?  The resist is then put into a bottle with a nozzle.  The nozzle looks a lot like a cake decorating tip.  I traced the pattern with the resist.  Then you take silk paint, or in this case, silk dye (from Jaquard) and paint the areas you want.  This part is magic.  It’s a little like using the paintbrush on a digital program.  The dye flows through the silk and spreads to all the areas not enclosed by the resist.  It is very important when putting down the resist to completely fill in the lines.  If you don’t, the dye will bleed through the gaps.

I mentioned that I used a silk dye.  In the past, when working on smaller projects, I have used silk paint.  Silk paint is much easier to fix than silk dye, but it has a tendency to leave little lines where you stopped painting and began painting again.  The silk dye blended together much better and what color variation there was looked more like shading.  Here is what it looked like when I was done painting it.

Nice huh?  a few splotches and a a few bleeds, but overall, very nice.  Now comes the hard part.  Silk dyes are not color fast unless they have been heat treated, usually steam set.  I do not have an industrial grade steamer, so I had to improvise.  First I lay out the dried piece on an absorbent cotton cloth, in this case an old bed sheet.

Then I rolled up the piece inside the cloth.

I folded up this roll and stuffed it into my vegetable steamer.  The instructions I had said not to let it touch the sides.  I thought that this was because they would be hot and burn the package, and since my vegetable steamer worked differently, I wouldn’t have to worry about that.  Turns out I was wrong.  The problem with letting it touch the sides is that it allows condensation to pool on the silk.  This removes the dye from the silk where the water pooled.

You can also see in these photos where the pencil didn’t wash out of the fabric  🙁  Since this piece is going to be affixed to a parasol and not going to need to go through the rigors of washing.  I just repainted the holes without re-steaming them.  They will probably fade a bit faster in the sun, but it shouldn’t be too obvious.

The next step was to affix this silk to the paper parasol.  For this I used Mod Podge (glossy).  Mod Podge stays fairly flexible which should allow the parasol to open and close, and the gloss should provide a nice finish.  Also, it should make it resistant to water.  I don’t think I’d want to use it as an umbrella, but it should stand up to the rigors of an outdoor event, even if it gets a little damp.

This worked out quite well.  One other thing that I would have done differently is to paint the paper on the parasol white before gluing down the silk.  Though it is difficult to tell in this picture, the silk is thin enough that the yellowish tone of the paper showed through the silk.  It is by no means a perfect piece, but the blemishes are far less noticeable on the finished parasol, and I will not be ashamed to carry it.  I still haven’t glued down the edges.  I’m trying to decide if I want fringe.

I am looking forward to more forays into the realm of silk painting.  I definitely need to figure out a better way to set the dye.  Maybe my canning pot would be big enough to suspend a large piece in.  I might even have to get my own silk stretching frame.  🙂