So, I think I’ve finally caught up on all the things I’ve finished so far that I wanted to share with the world. Now, what I’ve really been wanting to do, which is post as I’m working on projects. Yay! So, here’s one that came out of nowhere…
My boyfriend arrived home one evening last week with a silk painting kit. I’d never contemplated silk painting, but now I needed to. As soon as possible. So, today I worked through the kit. The kit came with two long silk scarves and I believe his mom put in two silk handkerchiefs.
Since the mordant could only be mixed up once, I felt like I had to paint all the items to fix at the same time. I decided to paint flowers on the handkerchiefs, but the paint spreads much more than I thought it would, even as it continues to dry.
For the really long scarves, I decided to play with the spreading. Since the scarves were laying on plastic bags, the way the dye spread was pretty cool. On the stripy scarf, I sprinkled rock salt, which is supposed to marbalize the dye as it dries. On the blotchy scarf (my favorite so far), I experimented with scrunching up the plastic and a water spray bottle.
Now, I have to wait 24 hrs for them to dry. I’ll iron them (to heat set the dye) and then swish them around in a mordant. Let them dry and then iron again and they should be rather pretty.
… I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them, though… But silk painting was fun! I can’t claim that I’m an incredible artist w/lifelike representations, but its hard to make anything ugly with such pretty colors!
I’ve seen instructions on how to paint on a frame, which would eliminate some of the spreading artifacts. And there were instructions on how to use a resist to keep colors from combining. So, I think this is a technique I’ll be able to use in future costumes.