Monday, August 4, 2008

Another Take on Silk Paper

I went to Sarah Lawrence's hands-on workshop "Knitting with Natural Materials - no knitting involved" yesterday afternoon. I mean, who could resist that title?

We used silk cocoon strippings, industrial weight baking paper (from England - is there something similar available here from restaurant supply stores? Sarah says GladBake is too flimsy), spray colours from Sarah's supply (though Moonshadow Mists were also available) and a piece of a circular tube knitted with silk thread (the knitting bit).

Blogger won't let me upload any images at the moment though.

The process relies on the silk containing a large amount of sericin which can be activated by moisture and heat so that the fibres meld together. The knitting has to be in natural fibres - silk preferably, but cotton and bamboo also possible. Wool is apparently a no-no.

I made another sample this afternoon, using a hastily knitted-with-bamboo-yarn piece and Moonshadow Mist sprays. I probably also dampened it down too much, because it still isn't dry enough to scan. I may try another tomorrow with some cotton knit I already have.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey, how nice to see my name on a blog from Aus. I'm so glad you enjoyed the workshop. If anybody wants to have a go, I'll be doing mini tuts very soon on my new blog. Sprays can be got from www.craftynotions.com/creativecolourspray.htm

I arrived home safe and can say I had a brill time with all my newly-found Aus textile pals.